Boondock Kollage

Regina N. Bradley is Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Armstrong State University and an alumna Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at Harvard University. She can be reached at www.redclayscholar.com.

• Kiese Laymon: Foreword – Prologue: Reckoning – Acknowledgments – Part One: Reaching Back Around – A Visitation from Grace – Intentions – Between the Hedges – Good Bleach – Part Two: Long Division – Beautiful Ones – Happy Feelins – Splish-Splash – Skin Carnival – As Above So Below – Part Three: Stitches in Time – The Apothecary – Moving Furniture – Some Kind of Wonderful (Illustrated by John Jennings and Stacey Robinson) – Discussion Question Bank.

"Boondock Kollage is an intricate collection of stories that will be new yet deeply familiar to any reader. These tales are new because they take place in rural Georgia, in a specific tree and lake studded landscape peopled with small, particular communities; they are familiar because the characters that people this place, with their wide, sloped shoulders, their intricate wigs, the way they shuffle and joke and comfort and misunderstand and shore each other up, are achingly human. In Bradley's hands, these varied pieces cohere into a deeply compelling, moving work of art. This collection will be deeply satisfying for the reader who wants to experience the full range of human emotion, who wants to feel fear, triumph, bone-deep sadness, and bright joy, because this author does it all."Jesmyn Ward, Associate Professor of English, Tulane University; author of Men We Reaped and Salvage the Bones