Welcome to Braggsville (44 page)
Read Welcome to Braggsville Online
Authors: T. Geronimo Johnson
Without sayingâwell, almost but not quite: U. C. “Fiat Lux” Berkeley; that beautiful woman who looks good in everything she wears; the Braggsville novel commission; LaCherriere, French polyglot factory; Vltava, both minor planet and river; Sheryl “Town Crier” Johnston; Saturn; Kelly “Eagle Eye” Farber; the tribe at HarperCollins/William Morrow, most notably Team BRAGGZâCandice Carty-Williams, Mandy Kain, Lynn Grady, Kaitlin Harri, Jennifer Hart, Doug Jones, Morwenna Loughman, Tobly McSmith, Jonathan Pelham, Mary Ann Petyak, Clare Reihill, Kelly Rudolph, Liate Stehlik, Mary Beth Thomas; and the home teams at Iowa y WMU y OSUC y Berzerkeley y Atl y Nola.
And of course: my mom, Irene “The Matron Saint” English-Johnson; my dad, Tyrone “Esquire” Johnson; my sister, Ingrid “A Cappella Queen” Johnson-Lucuron; mon beau friere, Pierre “Waffle House” Johnson-Lucuron; the neph, Little Geronimo, for being a model of tenacity; Elizabeth “Tour de France” Cowan; and the old school ATL krewe (Click, Costarides, Dixon, Hazim, Mclean, O'Ree, Prieto, Price, Wages). Masquerades! Know that your contribution is not forgotten, even if you are not listed here.
About the Civil War, Sigmund Freud, Ishi, and “protecting and serving,” there is little left to say, except that half a haircut is no haircut at all.
Photo by Elizabeth R. Cowan
B
ORN 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 fellowshipsâincluding a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowshipâat Arizona State University, the University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, Western Michigan University, and Stanford. Johnson is also a curriculum designer for Bay Area nonprofits and the director of the UC Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program. His fiction and poetry have appeared in
Best New American Voices, Indiana Review,
the
Los Angeles Review,
and
Illuminations,
among others. 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.
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More Outstanding Early Praise for
WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE
“
Welcome to Braggsville
is that rare book so highly charged with both comedy and tragedy, and so nimble in its storytelling, that it seems to understand the world of its characters down to the smallest particle. This is one of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year.”
âKevin Brockmeier, award-winning author of
The Brief History of the Dead
“In exuberant prose, Johnson takes aim at a host of issues, gleefully satirizing political opportunists, social media, and cultural mores . . . a provocative exploration of contemporary America that is likely to be a hit with adventurous readers.”
â
Booklist
“DeLillo-esque for its orgiastic pop-culture roiling,
Welcome to Braggsville
deconstructs race, class, and gender, leaving the human heart wholly intact. This is a virtuoso performance by one of our strongest new voices.”
âRichard Katrovas, award-winning poet and author of
Scorpio Rising
“Geronimo Johnson's powerful second novel combines the intellectual urgency of a satire with the emotional resonance of a tragedy.
Welcome to Braggsville
is as smart as it is subversive, and as bleakly hilarious as it is deeply necessary.”
âJennifer duBois, award-winning author of
A Partial History of Lost Causes
“In Geronimo Johnson's brilliant, wildly satirical, and also deeply sobering book, we move between Berkeley, California, and Braggsville, Georgia, looking to decode no less than the deepest secrets of how race is lived in America. The story looms larger than life. At every turn, the impasses Johnson shows us are our own.”
âTess Taylor, award-winning poet and author of
The Forage House
“Inventive, provocative, troubling, hilarious: It's hard to sum up
Welcome to Braggsville
in any other way but to add the word âwildly' in front of each of these words.”
âRobin Hemley, author of
Do-Over!
“A riotous tour de force.”
âAndrew Lam, award-winning author of
Birds of Paradise Lost
“A stylish satire about the worst that can happen when four idealistic friends try to bring Berkeley activism back to Braggsvilleâa time warp of a small Southern town. A painful, funny novel.”
âBennett Sims, author of
A Questionable Shape
“The evidence you need that a reexamination of the past can be a prescient warning for all our future days is magnificently in your hands.”
âCAConrad, poet and author of
ECODEVIANCE
Hold It 'Til It Hurts
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photographs: feathers © by Gordana Simic/Shutterstock; jockey © by American Spirit/Shutterstock; tree © by dra_schwartz/Getty Images
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE
. Copyright © 2015 by T. Geronimo Johnson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-230212-0
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN 9780062302144
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Por que?
2
Mengapa?
3
Why? Evolution, Bitches! Because. She eats two breakfasts. Gotta put a dick to it. Because she's your mom. Because she not. Because she's your due. Because she not. Because the morning after the Halloween hi-fi you find a shark's tooth lounging on the toilet bolt, fanned (someone forgot their tweezers and missed the target), swollen red at edge, an exploded view of your ignorance (you panic, Who cut themselves?). Because you didn't. Because not a neighbor would say not a word if this parade filled the bowl at the end of road. Because no one else is copping tickets to this circus. Because you're not even sure how to spell Ki-ya (Ginzu and water-melon?). Because it's natural. Because it's not. Because they grouse and grumble, knees nickeled, backs aspasm with jealousy. Be-cause her legs start yesterday, end tomorrow, straddle unending night. Because she pass cell phone test. Because she drinks beer with a straw. Because she native. Because at dim sum she humored by your fake translation: small portions; and the dumpling drivers yield like Il Junior is in the house. Likening! Embranquecimento! Because she's no Luna; that slick bitch borrows her light, as do you and YOU. Because you gotta put a dick to epicanthic folds. Because father would go zombie, but mother, well, she did say that thing that one time, she did say you were free to live your own life, but she did cry that one time, so you knew what she meant . . . Because you gotta put a dick to accents. Because that no wig! Because those colors can't bleed; that spirit not bottled. Because you could fix her; she, you. Because you never had a passport, green card, papers. Because her cassolette would lure a minotaur out of the maze. Because she's the best chance your kids got, and you ain't even kissed yet, though every silent, holy night she barebacks YOUR dreams.
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See appendix for works cited