“This is the rare debut that introduces not a promising talent but a major writer, fully formed”—Garth Greenwell
A Lucky Man
Stories
- “Each story is a trenchant exploration of race and class, vividly conveying the tension between social codes of masculinity and the vulnerable, volatile self.”—The New Yorker
In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J’ouvert can’t help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history.
Jamel Brinkley’s stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class—where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.
Jamel Brinkley’s stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class—where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.
$26.00
About the Author
Credit: Arash Saedinia
Upcoming Events
Jamel Brinkley reading at UC Davis
Date:
Location:
UC Davis in Davis, CAview map
Location: Peter J. Shields Library.
Praise
- “[A Lucky Man] may include only nine stories, but in each of them, Brinkley gives us an entire world.”—NPR.org
- “The stories hit with a silent thunder that reverberates within you long after you’ve finished them.”—San Francisco Chronicle
- “Brinkley’s collection A Lucky Man, already creating waves within the literary sphere, manages to be simultaneously polemical and immersive, in a series of tenderly insightful studies of masculinity, race, and the scars of history.”—Entertainment Weekly
- “With equal parts precision and poetry, these nine audacious stories step into the minefields awaiting boys of color as they approach manhood in Brooklyn and the Bronx—testing the limits of relationships, social norms, and their own definitions of masculinity.”—O, the Oprah Magazine
