new black fiction

  • PageTurners: We’re in for a Helluva Literary Year
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    PageTurners: We’re in for a Helluva Literary Year

    One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find joy in reading again. I had this same goal last year–and let’s face it, every year for a while now–and even felt the hope of achieving that goal when we all went into lockdown, assuming I would have plenty of time to read and get back…

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    The Inheritance

    I was tiptoeing past my mama’s bedroom—hoping not to disturb her afternoon nap, a crime I’m accused of committing most every other Saturday—when I caught a glimpse of something that made me take a couple of giant steps back. A dress hanging outside her closet door. A black dress with a short jacket, burgundy accents,…

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    Talon of God

    My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” —Psalm 42 Prologue “Spare some change for a veteran?” His words were empty, barely loud enough to be heard over the trains thundering on the elevated rail overhead. Some days, Lenny didn’t know why…

  • Dominate
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    Dominate

    I wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything. The smell of whiskey on his breath. The hurried kiss and his tongue latched around my left nipple. The gentle suckling as my abrasive wool sweater remained bunched against my throat. I told myself it meant nothing and I was nothing but an ends to a means.…

  • The Takedown
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    The Takedown

    “And that was when Mr. Bailey groped you?” the human resources manager’s face showed no trace of emotion. He had put a box of tissues on the table, setting it down with a dull thud. The tissue sticking up looked like a staircase that went nowhere. “Yes,” Megan said. “He closed the blinds, locked the…

  • Birthday Boy
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    Birthday Boy

    Kuokoa B. Mchango was certain that it was the last night he would be alive, for you see, tomorrow was his 28th birthday. As he lay in his fold-out cot and stared at the low ceiling, he realized with a twinge of sadness that this fact didn’t bother him nearly as much as it used…

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    Roses

    In the summer of 1998, shortly after my girlfriend Valerie moved out of our Brooklyn apartment, using the excuse that I was too depressing to live with, Mom called me from her Harlem brownstone, sniffling into the phone. “He’s gone, David,” she said, her voice cracking. “I knew as soon as they started cutting off…