Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man

Ronaldo V. Wilson's poetry has appeared in Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century, Blithe House Quarterly, Callaloo, Chroma, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Interim, nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, and The Encyclopedia Project. He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Djerassi, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. Wilson teaches Creative Writing and African American Poetics at Mount Holyoke College.

"Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man is a riveting interrogation of two men in relationship. Ronaldo V. Wilson's prose poems are alternately tough and tender probes into the underbelly of their psyches. With audacity and wit reminiscent of the work of Hilton Als, bell hooks, Frantz Fanon, and James Baldwin, Wilson decodes sociopolitical narratives around race, sexuality, and class. Identity, Wilson seems to say, is only a collection of stories-the ones told about us in battle with the ones we tell ourselves. What we have here is palpable consciousness: a stunning achievement."