African American Ghost

A group of women contemplate violence after they’re sent into foreign territory to make husbands of the enemy. A support network of traumatized joggers meets to discuss the bodies they’ve found on their runs. And a town replaces its Confederate monument with a rotating cast of local residents. Slippery but muscular, sly but electric, this stunning debut collection moves from horror to magical realism to satire with total authority. In these stories, characters build and remake their sense of home, be it with one another or within themselves.

Pain is a survival mechanism of fundamental importance. It plays a crucial role in our lives, and eventually molds us into whoever it is that we become. At least it did for Zuri. After her world is brutally destroyed, she feels she has nothing left to hold on to but the fading dream of escaping the ghetto. Young, beautiful, and naïve, she is drawn into the world of sex and money, working at a hole in the wall strip club in South Philly.

Fear and terror grip a small Southern town when a cheerleader goes missing. Ginny Westbrook, a budding journalist, seeks out the killer even as she searches for her own identity. Digging too deeply and stumbling upon a string of missing girls, she clashes with a serial killer who harbors a hate of interracial relationships and has a passion for nursery rhymes. Are the strange occurrences those of the occult or just coincidence?

Theresa Hopson is the successful owner of one of the hottest new stores in Durham, North Carolina: Miss Thang's Holy Ghost Corner and Church Women's Boutique. But success isn't enough without someone to share it with. Theresa needs a God-fearing, intelligent, hard-working, and loving man. Unfortunately, the pickings are slim. Reverend Parvell Sykes is greedy and conniving, and the only other single, successful man in town hasn't seen the inside of a church in years. But God works in mysterious ways.

Most of us know that our history is plagued by atrocious acts of slavery, racism, and discrimination. What many people don’t fully consider is the perpetuation of subconscious beliefs about race. This belief that racial discrimination is acceptable has been handed down in our culture from one generation to another. The unchecked spread of racism serves only to corrupt the human rights of all racialized people.