Does a two time Pulitzer Prize winner need an introduction?
Colson Whitehead's iconoclastic body of work is acclaimed for its deft exploration of genre and integration of social themes.
The Underground Railroad, one of Whitehead's most liberated works, is a historical fiction novel reimagining the figurative Underground Railroad as a literal subterranean train system. The novel is a helpful lens to understand Whitehead as a writer, often blending history with fiction, settings are often set alight with vibrant descriptions, capturing the sense of zeitgeist.
Crook Manifesto is the second novel (following Harlem Shuffle) in a planned trilogy. The intermediary novel is splintered into three sections, each respectively taking place in 1971, 1973 & 1976. Each year is a self contained narrative, deftly covering a plot set in bicentennial Harlem. Reading as novellas we follow the familiar life of a charismatic antihero Ray Carney, a furniture salesman dedicated to getting on the straight and narrow, but often descending into a world of crime. The first section of the book details the end of a crooked cops career. The second section covers the filming of a blaxploitation film. The third section, we see Harlem in flames.
Whitehead’s delicately dimensional characters are always a delight to sink into. These familiar faces provide the context and investment needed to skip across narratives as Whitehead does in Crook Manifesto.
Reviving the past in prose is by far one of Whitehead’s greatest strengths as a writer. Similarly to Harlem Shuffle, New York breathes in this novel. Inhaling the tawdry smoke of a Harlem changing hands and being set alight in the process. Crook Manifesto is worth the read if only to feel the setting in your soul.
This novel feels like the connecting train between Harlem Shuffle and the yet to be released final installment in this trilogy. It is very much The Second. It does not stand on its own as Harlem Shuffle does, it isn’t meant to. Diverting and fracturing across years, you are drawn in by character and place. A connecting cavalcade between novels, diverting and dawdling before eventually arriving at its conclusion which Whitehead is currently writing.
You can find Crook Manifesto here, but we encourage you to begin with its predecessor Harlem Shuffle.
Selected by the Editor.
Thin Skin by Jenn Shapland
"A visceral exploration of the thin membrane between the self, the body, and the systems that control them."
- Katherine May, author of Wintering
"In her introduction, Shapland refers to the ability of the essay to do anything or go anywhere as a part of her love for the form--and in the essays that follow, she shows us she meant it. A wrenching, loving and trenchant examination of feminism, nuclear weapons production, healthcare, queerness and American life unlike any I can think of, in essays that give lessons in pushing this form to the limit. The resulting collection is iconoclastic, electric, illuminating, and the honesty and art in these essays bring with them a series of welcome awakenings. A book to keep for a long time."
- Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"Jenn Shapland's mind is a marvel. In Thin Skin, she puts it to work on our permeability to one another, and the result is a stunning, urgent, and layered consideration of our climate-catastrophe, pandemic-laden day. As each essay considers vulnerability in a different form, Shapland proves herself a brilliant and compassionate guide through loss and the enduring need to find hope. She offers no easy answers, but something far more valuable: deeper, more acute understanding--the best kind of balm."
- Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
