Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

THINGS TO DO, WHEN YOU'RE GOTH IN THE COUNTRY

Chavisa Woods

Capturing the lyricism of lives without a future in a southern Illinois, southern
Indiana, and New York City, Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country introduces us to Chavisa Woods's people. They are smart and poor, lost and hoping not to be found, a people of faith who have no god, and of high hopes but few if any expectations - inhabitants, mostly young, of a third world country without a name that exists within America, mostly hidden.

Available products
Book Published 2017-05-01 by Seven Stories Press

Comments

[...] Woods embraces the complex humanity of her characters even as she explores the tragedy of enculturation, identifying forces that divide us. Think of her as a literary exorcist, calling out certain entities that possess rural America: isolation, working-class poverty, drugs, incarceration, military dogma, and evangelical religion... Woods allows ambivalence to complicate her stories so they cannot be reduced to rhetoric, though they remain staunchly political. ...Alignment with the gothic literary tradition ties this collection to early American writers like Poe and Irving who helped forge a national persona that is anything but color-blind....The fears Woods engages through the gothic genre reflect certain anxieties of contemporary white culture. --- Erin Wilcox in The Rumpus Read more...

[...] The stories of Woods' collection are somewhat fantastical and take place pre-president Trump, against the background of the Gulf War, the Clinton and Obama administrations, yet offer a more sympathetic, interesting, and downright wacky look at small town U.S.A., reminding us that weird America has been here all along... These stories exist in those in-between places, those sticky spaces that are neither completely real nor imagined. They are never judgmental, nor do they let those who inflict pain off the hook. They offer both a realistic view of the negative contradictions, isolation, and overwhelming boredom that is part of modern rural life as well as a creative way out of it... Through the contradictions and ambiguity of these stories, we catch a few real glimpses of what it must feel like, for some, to live in the country; and what a queer country it is. -- Full Stop Reviews Read more...

[...]As Woods's characters struggle to eke out an identity, they confront the bleak difficulties of their lives and persist in surviving. Read more...

Interview with Chavisa Woods in Lambda Literary. Read more...

Nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award 2017 in the short fiction collection category.

[...] it is a rare work of literary fiction that fully showcases the rich and diverse American populace. The stories establish instant, distinct [...] -- Booklist, starred review

Set at the irresistible junction of toxic reality and the truly strange, the electric unexplainable, Chavisa Woods stirs up stories of drugs and dykes, mutant mohawks, the Gaza Strip and green glowing orbs. Here, the outsider becomes truly alien. Murakami meets the meth heads. Woods delivers a nation of cigarettes in language both lyric and thrilling. Reader, you have never before seen anything like this. --- Samantha Hunt, author of Mr.Splitfood

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award 2018.