Valerie Bah

The Rage Letters Valerie Bah

An exhausted security guard dreams of home. A sculptor and a pothead have great sex -- in the shadow of wax ex-lovers. A diversity workshop devolves into a familiar nightmare.

Throughout this deadpan collection, determined, damned, and triumphant characters appear and reappear, and their links become clear over the course of the fragmented narrative. The author playfully traces the portrait of the intertwined lives of a group of Black queer and trans friends as they navigate the social violence, traumas, and contradictions of their circumstances.

Originally published in French in 2021 by les Éditions du remue-ménage, as part of the Martiales collection, the stories in Bah's The Rage Letters -- set in Montreal and beyond -- are sometimes brief, often conversational, and always generative of possibilities through the characters' desire, rage, and acts of rebellion.
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