Synopses & Reviews
Welcome to Braggsville. The City That Love Built in the Heart of Georgia. Population 712.Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D'aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of "Berzerkeley," the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place, until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends: Louis, a "kung fu comedian" from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder from Iowa claiming Native roots; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago. They dub themselves the "4 Little Indians."
But everything changes in the group's alternative history class, when D'aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded "Patriot Days." His announcement is met with righteous indignation and inspires Candice to suggest a "performative intervention" to protest the reenactment. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the 4 Little Indians descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious at first but has devastating consequences.
A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.
Review
“A rollicking satire....Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant.” O Magazine
Review
“The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you'll read this year. T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it's acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic. Welcome to Braggsville. It's about time.” The Washington Post
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“Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word....A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, Welcome to Braggsville reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“Ghastly and funny and gloriously provocative....Johnson's prose is by turns scathing dark humor, soaring lyricism, and a quietly devastating analysis of every species of injustice. The result is a kind of mind-melting poetry a linguistic electroconvulsive therapy for the reader. This book will wake you up!” Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia!, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
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“Transcendence is what Geronimo Johnson achieves in this remarkable novel. Every racial assumption is both acknowledged and challenged in ways at times hilarious, at other times poignant. Welcome to Braggsville is ambitious, wise, and brave.” Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena
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“As daring a literary high-wire act as has come along in some time...frequently and unabashedly funny....[A] volatile mix of stinging satire, linguistic pyrotechnics and heartbreaking narrative.” San Francisco Chronicle
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“Both funny and frightful....But as 21st-century American culture crisscrosses with the nations history, Johnson's story evokes more than satirical humor. A sense of conscience and moral purpose takes shape at the heart of the book.” Associated Press
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“Southern Gothic meets West Coast political correctness with hilarious results in Johnson's new satirical novel....An odyssey through Waffle Houses, evangelical churches and backyard barbecues ensues, with attitudes about everything from race to social media getting skewered.” New York Post
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“Combines Ben Fountain's steely political eye, Junot Diaz's pop-infused dogma, and Toni Morrison's sense of social justice through historical reckoning. Big, shiny literary prizes were created for books like this one.” Wiley Cash, bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home
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“Madcap, satirical, sometimes profane and uncanny...Welcome to Braggsville is a deeply pleasurable read for the sheer wonder of Johnson's prose, but a deeply disturbing read for the truth it reveals about us.” BookPage
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“Great American writers whose names came to mind as I was reading Welcome to Braggsville: Tom Wolfe, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, H.L. Mencken, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison. Johnson's timely novel is a tipsy social satire...a tour de force.” NPR's Fresh Air
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“Reading this novel is not unlike listening to an erudite satirist play the dozens in a marathon performance....Organic, plucky, smart, Welcome to Braggsville is the funniest sendup of identity politics, the academy and white racial anxiety to hit the scene in years.” New York Times Book Review
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“Stunning and poignant...Johnson's novel may not have the answer to the problems he's addressing, [but] it's clear that he's asking the right questions.” LA Review of Books
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Welcome to Braggsville is a comic, rollicking, and biting story about the cultural clash between the rural South and a bastion of contemporary politically sensitive liberalism.” Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Born and raised in New Orleans, T. Geronimo Johnson is the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville and Hold It 'Til It Hurts, a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. He received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his M.A. in language, literacy, and culture from UC Berkeley. He has taught writing and held fellowships — including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship—at Arizona State University, Iowa, Berkeley, Western Michigan University, and Stanford. He lives in Berkeley, California.