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Fiction Read an Excerpt from Holding Pattern, from 'Bread and the Land' The world of Jeffery Renard Allen's stunning
short-story collection is a place like no other. A recognizable
city, certainly, but one in which a man might sprout wings or
copper pennies might fall from the skies on to your head. Yet
these are no fairy tales. The hostility, the hurt, is all too
human.
Fiction In this multifaceted, brilliantly colored,
intensely musical novel, Jeffery Renard Allen tracks the
interwoven lives of two brothers, Lucius and John Jones, who are
married to two sisters, Gracie and Sheila McShan. For them,
their parents, and their children, life is always full of
departures; someone is always fleeing town and leaving the
remaining family to suffer the often dramatic, sometimes tragic
consequences. The multiple effects of the comings and goings are
devastating: these are the almost mythic expression of the
African American experience during the past half-century.
Paperback: 170 pages Allen's extraordinary verbal energy is contagious to the
point of shouting. Praise for Stellar Places:
Paperback: 158 pages Poet, novelist and critic, Jeffery Renard Allen brings a number of characteristics to his first collectional of poems. He adapts jazz and blues forms to lyric poetry and uses a variety of cultural sources to draw together materials that exist in a shared mythology. The result has the directness and clarity of an African-American Homeric hymn. Rich in musicality, Allen's work offers an extraordinary breadth of reference and discovery.
Graywolf Press Pan African Literary Forum
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