A Year in Reading: Chantal V. Johnson
My first novel came out this year and it was hard to focus on reading in the months before and after. At the beginning of the year, I planned to read all of Percival Everett’s novels. I failed pretty spectacularly but I did get to So Much Blue and Wounded. (I’ve already read Erasure and The Trees—thanks!) In a creative landscape where writers of color are being mined for a particular kind of racial experience ore, each encounter with Everett’s work feels like a wise uncle encouraging you to stay weird. Like, you can just write about black cowboys or whatever.
Throughout March I read a lot of post-trauma fiction for a Lit Hub piece. New favorites include by and by . If I were to write that essay today I’d add ’s to the
