First published 2022
Randall Kenan opens his heart in this collection of personal essays that remained largely hidden during his lifetime. He writes about the three women who shaped him: his grandmother, his great-aunt who taught school, and her closest friend. He recalls his childhood terror of snakes and the joy he found in reading. The tobacco fields and hog farms of eastern North Carolina come alive through his memories of hard labor and changing seasons. Food becomes a character itself as Kenan celebrates the Southern dishes that nourished him. He traces his growth as a thinker and writer, sharing his deep connections to figures like Eartha Kitt, Gordon Parks, Ingmar Bergman, and James Baldwin. These essays reveal the man behind the celebrated fiction writer, showing how his identities as a Black man, gay man, intellectual, and Southerner shaped his vision. The collection offers readers intimate access to a brilliant mind reflecting on the experiences that made him who he was.
Genres: american-fiction, african-american, autobiography, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, personal-growth
Setting: North Carolina
Period: 20th-century
288 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company