Get Down: Stories
by Asali Solomon

Asali Solomon’s characters are vivid misfits?a heathen at Jesus camp, a scheming prep-school student, a middle-aged mom pining for her salsa-dancing salad days, a scheming twentysomething virgin, a college stud in love with his weight-lifting partner, a lonely girl in love with a yellow dress. The kids in Get Down are trapped between their own good breeding and their burning desire to join the house party of sex, romance, and bad behavior that seems to be happening on some other block, down some other more dangerous street. The adults in Get Down are just trying to hold it together.
Here is a debut that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure. Set mostly in middle-class black Philadelphia during the crack and Reagan years, the stories in Get Down are antic, poignant, and utterly universal?they’ll bring back memories for anyone who has ever stood in the corner of a darkened school gym wondering whether to dance … or duck for cover. They announce a sparkling new talent, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop whose work has been featured in Vibe, Essence, and the anthology Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts.
Asali Solomon was born and raised in West Philadelphia. She received the Rona Jaffe Award for the stories in Get Down. She lives in Lexington, Virginia. Asali Solomon’s characters are vivid misfits?a heathen at Jesus camp, a scheming prep-school student, a middle-aged mom pining for her salsa-dancing salad days, a scheming twenty-something virgin, a college stud in love with his weight-lifting partner, a lonely girl in love with a yellow dress. The kids in Get Down are trapped between their own good breeding and their burning desire to join the house party of sex, romance, and bad behavior that seems to be happening on some other block, down some other more dangerous street. The adults in Get Down are just trying to hold it together. Here is a debut that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure. Set mostly in middle-class black Philadelphia during the Reagan years, the stories in Get Down will bring back memories for anyone who has ever stood in the corner of a darkened school gym wondering whether to dance … or duck for cover. They announce a new talent, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop whose work has been featured in Vibe, Essence, and the anthology Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts. "Asali Solomon’s stories are luminous and touching and are an important contribution to the serious literature about the urban lives of black Americans. Solomon’s work is sensitively observed and should be applauded from the first words to the last."?Edward P. Jones, author of All Aunt Hagar’s Children "[A] funny mélange of characters in [this] sparkling debut collection."?Patrik Henry Bass, Essence "Asali Solomon’s stories are luminous and touching and are an important contribution to the serious literature about the urban lives of black Americans. Solomon’s work is sensitively observed and should be applauded from the first words to the last."?Edward P. Jones, author of All Aunt Hagar’s Children "With a merciless eye and compassionate heart, Asali Solomon draws a nuanced world where pain and class and sex shimmer deceptively under perfectly pitched prose. There’s danger here?and, occasionally, the quiet surprise of redemption. Brava!"?Lorene Cary, author of Pride