FörhandsrecensenterPenny Mickelbury

Inspired by a deep longing for writing that embodies the vivacity of Blackness and Black life, Black Joy Unbound is a multi-genre collection that encompasses a broad spectrum of literary writing on Black joy.

Includes stories by: Àjọkẹ́ Bọ́dúndé́, Akua Lezli Hope, Ashia Ajani, Audrey Williams, Azaria Brown, doris diosa davenport, Elizabeth Mudenyo, Elvis Alves, Esperanza Cintrón, Jasminum McMullen, Jeanine DeHoney, Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Kwame Daniels, Laura Doyle Péan, Maria Hamilton Abegunde, Marlee Alcina Miller, Penny Mickelbury, Regina Y.C. Garcia, Regina Jamison, Renée Bess, Shawn Williams, Sienna L.M., Stephanie Andrea Allen, Sylvain, Taylor King, Taylor McKinnon, Tiffany Smalls, Triston Dabney, Whitney French, Yeva Johnson.

The Akashic Noir Series' forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles's most recognized neighborhoods.

Featuring brand-new stories by: Steph Cha, Nikolas Charles, Tananarive Due, Larry Fondation, Gar Anthony Haywood, Naomi Hirahara, Emory Holmes II, Roberto Lovato, Penny Mickelbury, Gary Phillips, Eric Stone, Jervey Tervalon, Jeri Westerson, and Desiree Zamorano.

From the Introduction by Gary Phillips:

Within these pages you'll find stories of those walking the straight and narrow-until something untoward happens. Maybe it's someone taking a step out of line, getting caught up in circumstances spiraling out of their control. Maybe they're planning the grift, the grab . . . whatever it is to finally put them over. Other times the steps they take are to get themselves or people they care about out from under. You'll find the offerings in these pages are a rich mix of tone-tales told of hope,survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype. The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue . . .

From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology." "

In this stunning departure from her mystery writing, Penny Mickelbury’s collection of stories God’s Will and Other Lies, attends to the lives of Black women, mostly aging and elderly, all determined to face life with strength and grace. A nearly blind woman is determined to venture out into the world alone, and must face the consequences of her travels. A woman estranged from her community ponders the meaning of hearsay and its devastating consequences. A middle-aged woman leaves the danger of the city only to find it lurking in her own backyard. And in the novella, “Into the Fire,” Mickelbury follows the life of a southern family as they strive for success amidst the violence and uncertainty of 1960s Detroit. In beautiful and exacting prose, Mickelbury gives voice to an often-overlooked coterie of women in this superb collection of fiction.

This interracial, intergenerational saga of love, land and loss is told from the disparate perspectives of Ruth Thatcher, who is Black, and Jonas Thatcher, who is White, and spans nearly a century.  The story, told in three parts, begins in Carrie’s Crossing, Georgia, in 1917 on the eve of World War I, when Ruth and Jonas first meet as 12-year-old farm children, and ends in 2005 as their descendants struggle to unravel and understand the legacies of this star-crossed pair. Ruth and Jonas have left behind them two astounding wills and a century of oral and written family history to tell the stories of their respective families against the backdrop of Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, two World Wars, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the Jazz Age, segueing ultimately into the strange new digital world of the Twenty-First Century. During the course of their two lifetimes, Ruth and Jonas—and their respective families—have evolved, and ultimately have prospered, but it is left for their descendants to come to grips with the long-unacknowledged truth that the two families are actually one. Winners will receive bound galleys.