Description
"A writer of exceptional gifts and grace." --Joyce Carol Oates
Darnell Tucker has more to think about than the average twenty-year-old. A resident of impoverished Rio Seco, California, he works part time as the lone black member of the fire department, and will soon be a father. Though he loves his job, cutbacks to the state budget force him to search for new work, and the low-paying positions he finds rival firefighting in their peril. On two of the jobs, he's mistaken for a criminal by the police; coming home from another, he's shot at by a gang. His path blocked by economics, institutionalized racism, and the dangers of the place where he lives, how can he provide for his daughter, who has changed his life?
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights is a stark and thoroughly convincing portrait of life on the margins.
Author: Susan Straight
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Published: 10/22/2019
Pages: 566
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.41lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.25w x 1.27d
ISBN13: 9781640093614
ISBN10: 1640093613
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Cultural Heritage
- Fiction | African American & Black | Urban & Street Lit
About the Author
Susan Straight has published eight novels and a memoir, In the Country of Women. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and received the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family.