T Geronimo Johnson

Welcome to Braggsville T Geronimo Johnson

Publisher Marketing: From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of "Hold It Til It Hurts "comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment."Welcome to Braggsville the city that love built in the heart of Georgia."Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berzerkeley, the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends: Louis, a kung-fu comedian from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder claiming Native roots from Iowa; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago. They dub themselves the 4 Little Indians. But everything changes in the group s alternative history class when D aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded as Patriot Days. His announcement is met with righteous indignation and inspires Candice to suggest a performative intervention to protest the reenactment. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the 4 Little Indians descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, waffle houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences. With the keen wit of "Billy Lynn s Long Halftime Walk "and the deft argot of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more. A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, "Welcome to Braggsville "reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America." Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2014 pg. 73 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Publishers Weekly 10/27/2014 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Booklist 12/01/2014 pg. 24 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Library Journal 12/01/2014 pg. 92 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2014 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Shelf Awareness 02/24/2015 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) New York Times Book Review 03/08/2015 pg. 30 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) New York Times Book Review 03/01/2015 pg. 11 (EAN 9780062302120, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Johnson, T Geronimo Born and raised in New Orleans, T. Geronimo Johnson received his M. F. A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his M. A. in language, literacy, and culture from UC Berkeley. He has taught writing and held fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship at Arizona State University, the University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, Western Michigan University, and Stanford. His first novel, Hold It 'Til It Hurts, was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Johnson is currently a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in Berkeley, California.