All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere: Stories: Zero Street Fiction
Autor Dr. DeMisty D. Bellingeren Limba Engleză Paperback – sep 2024
Fantastical, sensual, and as beguilingly strange as they are insightful and real, the stories of All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are centered around intimate familial or romantic relationships, featuring protagonists who make awesome discoveries—from the beautiful to the horrible—in seemingly mundane situations. The protagonists in each story come from marginalized communities, which sometimes exacerbates their problems but always allows for unique perspectives and epiphanies.
A violinist nearly hits a bicyclist with her car on her rush to rehearsal, leading to a blissful affair and speculation about the effect of love on her violin playing. The whispering of schoolgirls leads a teacher to consider her own fears and failings. In the title story the nature of motherhood, fatherhood, and familial pride plays against a backdrop of death and high school theater.
These are stories of human frailty and newfound strengths, with surprising confrontations. The writing is rich and playful, whether the characters are coy or startlingly direct, creating worlds in which the metaphorical might become literal in the blink of an eye. DeMisty D. Bellinger finds magic in the smallest moments and makes the biggest moments resonate with a quiet intensity.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496241306
ISBN-10: 1496241304
Pagini: 188
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 14 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria Zero Street Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496241304
Pagini: 188
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 14 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria Zero Street Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the novel New to Liberty and two collections of poetry, Peculiar Heritage and Rubbing Elbows. She is an associate professor of English and coordinator of the Center of Faculty Scholarship at Fitchburg State University.
Extras
Black Girl’s Magic
Voodoo Doll
She calls me her voodoo doll and sticks a sewing needle in the fattest
part of my left breast. I am surprised at how much it hurts, how
much it feels good, and wonder if there’s blood. “Hold still, now,”
she says, “for it to work. Close your eyes and channel your energy
through the needle.” She stabs another needle, this time my right
arm, the shoulder. How many more times she’ll jab me? How did
we get here, me letting her pincushion me? And who, I wondered,
was she directing this pain to? Who was on the other side?
Zombied
I think I’m high, but I don’t remember smoking or drinking
anything. I look in the mirror to check if my eyes are bloodshot,
and they’re not; they are typing paper white. My skin is discolored
with white powder, and I can see my brown hues hidden beneath. I
think: white face. I think: I must go pull the weeds, mow the lawn,
take out the garbage, and cut the stems from the greens.
Read Me
The snake was disorienting. I kept my eyes on him (his name
was Baby Legba), even as she wrapped him around me, erasing
the negative energy, centering me. The snake and the fifty candles
brought me somewhere else. I sat down, cross-legged on the floor,
across from her. Her hazel eyes transported me. The bones, cowry
shells, and crystals she shook hypnotized me. “Ask your question,”
she said, “in your head.” Baby Legba hissed a whisper hiss, then
slithered away into a corner, coiled up. She threw the pieces in her
hands onto the marked floor between us. The bones and crystals
so polished, they collected all of the light from the fifty candles and
from the fire of her hazel eyes.
Prayer
Before we go to bed, she feeds flower petals to a shrine. She gets
on her knees and says the Lord’s Prayer, then reads her rosary. She
sprinkles the room with blessed water. She asks me when I am
going to pray, and I shrug. She cuts her eyes at me and says, “You
have to live a spiritual life.” I say, “I believe in you.” She looks even
angrier and begins to peel away her clothes. I follow suit and ask
if she’ll still have me over. “Don’t be foolish,” she says.
Before Morning
in that liminal period when the moon is still setting and the sun is still
rising, you are up sprinkling your deck with watered-down rum. I feel
heavy and stay in your bed, watching the day changing out your window.
Then I remember Baby Legba, and I sit straight up. You come back to
bed and smile at me. “He’s in a terrarium,” you say. “You’re safe. You’re
always safe.” You kneel beside the mattress and say a silent prayer. I fall
back to sleep and offer potential nightmares to the fading moonlight.
Voodoo Doll
She calls me her voodoo doll and sticks a sewing needle in the fattest
part of my left breast. I am surprised at how much it hurts, how
much it feels good, and wonder if there’s blood. “Hold still, now,”
she says, “for it to work. Close your eyes and channel your energy
through the needle.” She stabs another needle, this time my right
arm, the shoulder. How many more times she’ll jab me? How did
we get here, me letting her pincushion me? And who, I wondered,
was she directing this pain to? Who was on the other side?
Zombied
I think I’m high, but I don’t remember smoking or drinking
anything. I look in the mirror to check if my eyes are bloodshot,
and they’re not; they are typing paper white. My skin is discolored
with white powder, and I can see my brown hues hidden beneath. I
think: white face. I think: I must go pull the weeds, mow the lawn,
take out the garbage, and cut the stems from the greens.
Read Me
The snake was disorienting. I kept my eyes on him (his name
was Baby Legba), even as she wrapped him around me, erasing
the negative energy, centering me. The snake and the fifty candles
brought me somewhere else. I sat down, cross-legged on the floor,
across from her. Her hazel eyes transported me. The bones, cowry
shells, and crystals she shook hypnotized me. “Ask your question,”
she said, “in your head.” Baby Legba hissed a whisper hiss, then
slithered away into a corner, coiled up. She threw the pieces in her
hands onto the marked floor between us. The bones and crystals
so polished, they collected all of the light from the fifty candles and
from the fire of her hazel eyes.
Prayer
Before we go to bed, she feeds flower petals to a shrine. She gets
on her knees and says the Lord’s Prayer, then reads her rosary. She
sprinkles the room with blessed water. She asks me when I am
going to pray, and I shrug. She cuts her eyes at me and says, “You
have to live a spiritual life.” I say, “I believe in you.” She looks even
angrier and begins to peel away her clothes. I follow suit and ask
if she’ll still have me over. “Don’t be foolish,” she says.
Before Morning
in that liminal period when the moon is still setting and the sun is still
rising, you are up sprinkling your deck with watered-down rum. I feel
heavy and stay in your bed, watching the day changing out your window.
Then I remember Baby Legba, and I sit straight up. You come back to
bed and smile at me. “He’s in a terrarium,” you say. “You’re safe. You’re
always safe.” You kneel beside the mattress and say a silent prayer. I fall
back to sleep and offer potential nightmares to the fading moonlight.
Cuprins
Acknowledgments
Part I
Black Girl’s Magic
Acquiring Joshua
Dreams Formed in Rain
A Lost Day
Three Tiers of Toppings
Love Your Braider
Horse Sense
Brother Charlie’s Intended
Part II
Awesome Everywhere
Trying to Balance
Jubilee
The Claimer of Bodies
Your Father Died
Part III
Tiger-Free Days
Ballad of Jane
Free Fish
Cat, Catfish, Cat
Tooth Fairy
Carry the Weight
Part IV
Ladybird, Ladybird
Whisper Network
The Ballad of Frankie Baker
Three Studies in Patience
Part V
Going Home
The Negotiation of Space
French Fry Soup
Good Fit
Part VI
We All Have Our Ghosts
Dancing Queen
All the Dreams You’ve Yet to Have
L’autunno
An Opossum Tale
Part I
Black Girl’s Magic
Acquiring Joshua
Dreams Formed in Rain
A Lost Day
Three Tiers of Toppings
Love Your Braider
Horse Sense
Brother Charlie’s Intended
Part II
Awesome Everywhere
Trying to Balance
Jubilee
The Claimer of Bodies
Your Father Died
Part III
Tiger-Free Days
Ballad of Jane
Free Fish
Cat, Catfish, Cat
Tooth Fairy
Carry the Weight
Part IV
Ladybird, Ladybird
Whisper Network
The Ballad of Frankie Baker
Three Studies in Patience
Part V
Going Home
The Negotiation of Space
French Fry Soup
Good Fit
Part VI
We All Have Our Ghosts
Dancing Queen
All the Dreams You’ve Yet to Have
L’autunno
An Opossum Tale
Recenzii
"Bellinger's prose is honest and unflinching. A thoughtful, observant collection of short stories from an important voice."—Kirkus Reviews
"This is an intimate collection that illuminates how the mundane moments of life can become more significant than we realize, and sometimes even catastrophic. Compelling and relatable."—Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature
"All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere adds to the cannon of literature on what it means to be female, but also on what it means to be truly seen by another."—Lara Lillibridge, MER Journal
“In All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere DeMisty D. Bellinger has gifted us a book of many worlds beneath the same roof, its stories and characters at turns brash, tender, joyous, sly, and always deeply, messily human. I loved dwelling in these pages. I loved the ride this collection took me on: one full of surprises and heart.”—emily m. danforth, author of Plain Bad Heroines and The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“DeMisty Bellinger’s new collection is full of surprising connections, complex questions, and wonderfully human perspectives on relationships and networks of kinship. I wanted to both race through it and savor every moment.”—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers: A Novel
“The stories in All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are a lesson in creative risk-taking. With this bold collection of genre-bending tales, Bellinger invites us to dismantle binaries around sexuality and gender, grief and comfort, desire and repulsion, damnation and redemption in ways that challenge and champion the messy mystery that is the human heart.”—Sheree L. Greer, author of Once and Future Lovers: Tenth Anniversary Edition
“Infectious reading. All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere is a feast of storytelling where women—mothers, daughters, and lovers—travel the roads between a world that wishes to constrain them and the ferocious realm of their own desires.”—Elwin Cotman, author of Weird Black Girls
“These stories are hot. Inventive, fierce, simmering with erotic energy and the sheer beautiful unexpectedness of women asking for more and better.”—Miciah Bay Gault, author of Goodnight Stranger
“Open this book to any page—you can’t lose. All Daughters are Awesome Everywhere is indeed awesome on every page. These meticulously detailed stories earned both my admiration and love. Great reading experience.”—Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You
Descriere
DeMisty D. Bellinger’s debut story collection covers queer liaisons and trysts, love bordering on the absurd, and awe-worthy finds in the familiar, the familial, and the mundane. These stories’ protagonists, mostly women, often unexpectedly redefine themselves in intimate circumstances.