Meet Melvin Ellington, a.k.a. Mouth – a Black twenty-something, ex-college radical who has just been released from a five-year prison stretch having been a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
Back in New York, hungry for freedom and desperate for companionship, Mouth quickly finds himself haunted by his past.
Through a filmic series of flashbacks, we see Mouth’s time in prison, his college days and, finally, his earliest high school days. Each street corner, subway ride and run-in with an old flame brings with it the echo of his previous life. The rhythm of blues and jazz is baked into each page, with the sounds of the city – barbershop talk, lively gossip, overheard conversations – imprinted in every word.
Wesley Brown boldly explores magnetic representations of Black masculinity in crisis, with a style that’s even more provoking than its subject.
About the author
Wesley Brown is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, five produced plays, wrote the narration for a segment of the PBS documentary, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, co-edited The Methuen Drama Anthology of American Women Playwrights, 1970–2020 and recently published the novella, Blue in Green. He is a Professor Emeritus of English at Rutgers University and a former Visiting Professor in the Arts Division of Bard College at Simon’s Rock.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
779,055 Ebooks in this category
