The Residue Years

By Mitchell S. Jackson,

Book cover of The Residue Years

Book description

'This novel is written with a breathtaking, exhilarating assurance and wit. Terrific' The Times

'A wrenchingly beautiful debut by a writer to be reckoned with' Jesmyn Ward

Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighbourhood in America's whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the '90s, those streets and beyond…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Residue Years as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

“Peoples,” the protagonist of Jackson’s coming of age novel is apt to announce, an African-Americanized riff on Shakespeare’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” which Jackson’s narrator voices from the recesses of his Mississippi, Portland neighborhood. Everything about this book is centered by the protagonist’s remarkable voice, a voice that very much inspired me to write my book. This is to say nothing of the deeply tragic, crack-era intergenerational family drama that The Residue Years tells.

From Keenan's list on coming of age while Black.

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