"A harrowing portrait of race relations in America, as beautiful as it
is urgent."--Entertainment Weekly
"Black satire with bite, like Zora Neale Hurston used to do, with a
smile and a sharp elbow. A touch of Paul Beatty, a dose of Dolemite, and
a serving of Dorothy Parker, too. Give My Love to the Savages
announces Chris Stuck as a fearless talent, a debut that'll make your
sides and your heart hurt."--Victor LaValle, author of The
Changeling
"Give My Love To The Savages is a wildly inventive collection of
provocative stories about navigating the minefield of black masculinity
in America. Stuck's fresh and fearless perspective overturns assumptions
about race and identity to reveal complex layers of absurdity. At times
merciless, always darkly funny, these are stories of unexpected
communion, connection, and compassion."--Chanelle Benz, author of
The Gone Dead
A provocative and raw debut collection of short fiction reminiscent of
Junot Diaz's Drown.
A Black man's life, told in scenes--through every time he's been called
nigger. A Black son who visits his estranged white father in Los Angeles
just as the '92 riots begin. A Black Republican, coping with a skin
disease that has turned him white, is forced to reconsider his life. A
young Black man, fetishized by an older white woman he's just met, is
offered a strange and tempting proposal.
The nine tales in Give My Love to the Savages illuminate the
multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of
race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of
characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take
aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience.
Chris Stuck traverses the dividing lines, and attempts to create meaning
from them in unique and unusual ways. Each story considers a marker of
our current culture, from uprisings and sly and not-so-sly racism, to
Black fetishization and conservatism, to the obstacles placed in front
of Black masculinity and Black and interracial relationships by society
and circumstance.
Setting these stories across America, from Los Angeles, Phoenix and the
Pacific Northwest, to New York and Washington, DC, to the suburbs and
small Midwestern towns, Stuck uses place to expose the absurdity of race
and the odd ways that Black people and white people converge and
retreat, rub against and bump into one another.
Ultimately, Give My Love to the Savages is the story of America. With
biting humor and careful honesty, Stuck riffs on the dichotomy of love
and barbarity--the yin and yang of racial experience--and the difficult
and uncertain terrain Black Americans must navigate in pursuit of their
desires.
