Welcome to Braggsville. T Johnson Geronimo
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Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London, SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
First published in the United States by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015
Copyright © T. Geronimo Johnson 2015
T. Geronimo Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Adapted from artwork by Amanda Kain. Cover images © dra_schwartz/Getty Images (tree); Gordana Simic/Shutterstock (feathers); American Spirit/Shutterstock (lawn jockey)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008101299
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007548019
Version 2015-12-08
More Outstanding Early Praise for
WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE
“Welcome to Braggsville is that rare book so highly charged with both comedy and tragedy, and so nimble in its storytelling, that it seems to understand the world of its characters down to the smallest particle. This is one of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, award-winning
author of The Brief History of the Dead
“In exuberant prose, Johnson takes aim at a host of issues, gleefully satirizing political opportunists, social media, and cultural mores … a provocative exploration of contemporary America that is likely to be a hit with adventurous readers.”
—Booklist
“DeLillo-esque for its orgiastic pop-culture roiling, Welcome to Braggsville deconstructs race, class, and gender, leaving the human heart wholly intact. This is a virtuoso performance by one of our strongest new voices.”
—Richard Katrovas, award-winning
poet and author of Scorpio Rising
“Geronimo Johnson’s powerful second novel combines the intellectual urgency of a satire with the emotional resonance of a tragedy. Welcome to Braggsville is as smart as it is subversive, and as bleakly hilarious as it is deeply necessary.”
—Jennifer duBois, award-winning
author of A Partial History of Lost Causes
“In Geronimo Johnson’s brilliant, wildly satirical, and also deeply sobering book, we move between Berkeley, California, and Braggsville, Georgia, looking to decode no less than the deepest secrets of how race is lived in America. The story looms larger than life. At every turn, the impasses Johnson shows us are our own.”
—Tess Taylor, award-winning
poet and author of The Forage House
“Inventive, provocative, troubling, hilarious: It’s hard to sum up Welcome to Braggsville in any other way but to add the word ‘wildly’ in front of each of these words.”
—Robin Hemley, author of Do-Over!
“A riotous tour de force.”
—Andrew Lam, award-winning author of Birds of Paradise Lost
“A stylish satire about the worst that can happen when four idealistic friends try to bring Berkeley activism back to Braggsville—a time warp of a small Southern town. A painful, funny novel.”
—Bennett Sims, author of A Questionable Shape
“The evidence you need that a reexamination of the past can be a prescient warning for all our future days is magnificently in your hands.”
—CAConrad, poet and author of ECODEVIANCE
Dedication
For all the Louis Changs, from my parents
Meet the New World, same as the Old World.
Contents
Appendix 1: Sexicon (The Glossary for the Rest of Us)