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LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEED
WINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment—a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer.
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. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. 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 claiming Native roots from Iowa; 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 to start, but will have devastating consequences.
With the keen wit of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and the deft argot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more.
A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.
- Sales Rank: #67826 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-08
- Released on: 2015-09-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.31" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Review
“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)
“A rollicking satire . . . Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant.” (O Magazine)
“Johnson’s writing is often brilliantly comic, and Braggsville is a welcome new kind of southern novel.” (Time, Top 10 Books of 2015)
“A stunning achievement with no clear literary precedent. Welcome to Braggsville . . . is one of the most searing, shocking looks at racial issues and campus activism in a long time.” (Men’s Journal, Best Books of 2015)
“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)
“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)
“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)
“The unsettling racial satire America needs right now . . . Welcome to Braggsville doesn’t offer easy polemic or easier sentimentality, but a deep dive into the American race problem as muddled, terrifying, and absurd as the reality.” (Huffington Post)
“You must read T. Geronimo Johnson. He is awesome.” (Sherman Alexie via Twitter)
“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)
“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)
“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)
“Full of virtuosic sentences and coruscating satire . . . a brilliant and necessary read.” (Buzzfeed, Best Books of 2015)
“Biting, clever . . . Following four Berkeley students bent on a bit of guerrilla theater at a Civil War re-enactment in Georgia, Geronimo Johnson never runs out of targets for his satirical pen, from Old South apologists to solipsistic students in the grip of self-righteous political correctness.” (The Daily Beast, Best Fiction of 2015)
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)
“Both funny and frightful . . . But as 21st-century American culture crisscrosses with the nation’s 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)
“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)
“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 barbecue’s ensues, with attitudes about everything from race to social media getting skewered.” (New York Post)
“Geronimo Johnson is a fearless and driven young writer of dazzling gifts. His books map American multiculture as a poignant and twisted human comedy in which nobody comes out clean. . . . surprising, heartbreaking, tragicomic, and deeply disturbing.” (Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award-winning author of Lord of Misrule)
“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)
“One of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year.” (Kevin Brockmeier, award-winning author of The Brief History of the Dead)
“Combines the intellectual urgency of a satire with the emotional resonance of a tragedy. Welcome to Braggsville is as smart as it is subversive, and as bleakly hilarious as it is deeply necessary.” (Jennifer duBois, award-winning author of A Partial History of Lost Causes)
“DeLilloesque for its orgiastic pop-culture roiling. This is a virtuoso performance by one of our strongest new voices.” (Richard Katrovas, award-winning poet and author of Scorpio Rising)
“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)
“Brilliant, wildly satirical, and also deeply sobering. The story looms larger than life. At every turn, the impasses Johnson shows us are our own.” (Tess Taylor, award-winning poet and author of The Forage House)
From the Back Cover
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEED
WINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment—a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer.
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. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. 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 claiming Native roots from Iowa; 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 to start, but will have devastating consequences.
With the keen wit of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and the deft argot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more.
A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.
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.
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
A disappointment
By Carl Matthes
Upon a recommendation from an aspiring writer, I purchased Braggsville. It was disappointing. I forced myself to keep reading, but finally just closed the book since I didn't really care about the characters or what became a burdensome story line. Author Johnson's writing style became a barrier - even with his list of definitions - to the flow and the rise and fall of the line. Cleverness in turning a phrase is a definite talent, turning and turning a phrase or using cutesy words and elongated sentences - which fall into the category of COIK (clear only if known) - defeats his writing.
48 of 51 people found the following review helpful.
A small-town Southern kid brings his Berkeley friends home to see the Civil War reenactment. What could go wrong??
By I Know What You Should Read
The fictional Braggsville, Georgia, population 712, is reminiscent of Wilcox County, Georgia (where they held the first integrated prom just two years ago). But, in Braggsville, there are still segregated proms. Every year, there is a festival called the Pride Week Patriot Days Festival, the highlight of which is a Civil War battle reenactment (not that anyone refers to it as the Civil War, of course). Black people live in the Gully; white people live on the other side of the Holler. Confederate flags and black lawn jockeys decorate houses. At local general stores, you can pick up bumper stickers with tasteful slogans like “IF YOU’RE ANY ‘CAN, EXCEPT AMERI-CAN—GO HOME” and “IF I’D KNOWN IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS, I WOULD HAVE PICKED MY OWN COTTON” and “KEEP HONKING—I’M RELOADING.”
D’aron Davenport is a white kid from Braggsville. He’s a vegetarian who gave up hunting (blasphemous in Braggsville!), and who feels “ready to be released into society.” He also happens to be the valedictorian of his class, so, upon graduation from high school, he escapes to Berkeley (“Berzerkely”).
Berkeley and Braggsville are, of course, as different as can be, and D’aron struggles to find his footing. But soon, at a party, he meets the three people who become his best friends. Along with D’aron, they call themselves the “4 Little Indians”: Louis (a Malaysian wannabe stand-up comedian whose stage name is Lenny Bruce Lee), Candice (a staunch and earnest liberal, Midwestern white girl with dreadlocks . . . who claims to be one-eighth Native American), and Charlie (a black dude from inner-city Chicago who went to a rich boarding school on a football scholarship).
During the fall of their sophomore year, the 4 Little Indians decide to take a class together: American History X, Y, and Z: Alternative Perspectives. On Fridays over lunch, the class meets for Salon de Chat, “an informal class with the tagline: People who don’t know their history are doomed to eat it!” The desks are arranged in four-tops, and the professor provides several discussion topics to cover over lunch. At one such Salon, D’aron mentions that his town hosts an annual festival that features a Civil War reenactment. His classmates are dumbfounded: "The table was shocked. The entire class in fact. They’d heard tell of Civil War reenactments, but they were still occurring? The War Between the States was another time and another country. As was the South. Are barbers still surgeons? Is there still sharecropping? What about indoor plumbing?"
But then Candice has an idea, and the 4 Little Indians hatch a plan. They will travel to Braggsville for spring break (which happens to coincide with the annual festival) and, during the reenactment, they will stage a “performative intervention,” which they will videotape to submit as their final project for class: "Three of them would dress as slaves, one wearing a harness under his clothes. One would act as the master, cracking a whip and issuing random, absurd order. [. . .] Then the slave wearing the hidden harness would get uppity, maybe make some untoward comment about the lady of the plantation or try to run off or just complaint that there wasn’t enough salt in the food. Then the party would get started. That slave would be hoisted from a low limb as if lynched."
Seems like a great idea, right? So, as planned, the 4 Little Indians travel to Braggsville for spring break, where they are welcomed with open arms by D’aron’s family (who have tactfully hidden their black lawn jockeys in the garage). They visit the Waffle House and Lou Davis’s Cash-n-Carry Bait Shop and Copy Center and other charming Southern spots, which they absorb with shock and awe. Their visit is certainly education. Unfortunately, however, their planned “performative intervention” does not go off without a hitch. In fact, things go downhill very, very quickly.
I read the first 200 pages in one sitting. And I LOVED it. The writing was arresting; the story was fabulous. Here are some of the things I thought when I started reading the book (up until about page 200):
-- Oh, my gosh. This is going to be a 4.5, for sure! This is the best start to a book I’ve read in ages. (The first chapter introduces you to protagonist D’aron by giving a run-down of the various nicknames by which he has been known over the years with their often unfortunate origins.).
-- I love this guy’s voice. It’s unique, it’s distinct, it’s fun. I like that the writing is peppered with slang (although the glossary at the end of the book is kind of lame) and references to current events. This T. Geronimo Johnson kind of reminds me of Junot Díaz.
-- Yes! This book smartly pokes fun at extreme liberalism/political correctness, the ridiculous culture of academia, and the deep-fried South. There are some great lines and paragraphs. Johnson does not shy away from making jokes about “sensitive” topics, which leads to many laugh-out-loud funny moments.
-- Oh, wait. I thought this T. Geronimo Johnson guy was from the South. His Waffle House lingo is flawed! Hashbrowns with jalapenos aren’t “spiced.” They’re “peppered.” He needed a Southern editor.
But then it all went to poop. The rest of the book took me about a week to finish. I was so disappointed! How can a book that starts out so well end so badly?! Here are some of the things I thought as I was finishing reading the book (after about page 200):
-- This book is trying too damn hard. An example: If you’re going to skip Chapter 13 and have it show up randomly between Chapters 21 and 22, then you should have a good reason to do so. Otherwise, stop trying to be cute.
-- This climaxed WAY too early . . . and had absolutely nowhere to go (at least nowhere good). So, basically, it just flounders and rambles and wanders for 150 pages.
-- Can we please send a memo to authors letting them know that standard punctuation should not be optional? Ugh.
-- The end of this book is a 2, at best.
It seems like Johnson started with a great, fully fleshed-out idea for the book’s beginning . . . and then just started writing before he had figured the whole thing out. It’s unfortunate, really. I really loved the first half of this book, and I kind of hated the second half. So, I averaged out the halves and gave the book as a whole a 3. And there you have it.
38 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
An Ambitious Attempt at Satire and Social Commentary
By Ethan
Every once in a while, an author attempts to make big statements about big ideas. To portray social subjects (racism, class, history, tradition, culture, etc.) in the confines of written words is no easy task. Often, any commentary becomes burdened by the mechanics of language. In his new novel, Welcome to Braggsville, author T. Geronimo Johnson attempts to tackle some of these topics.
As he begins his freshman year at UC Berkley, D'aron Davenport is clearly a fish out of water. Thousands of miles away from his hometown in Georgia, D'aron struggles to find his way in this new place. He has never had to put much effort into his school work, and quickly ascended to the top of his small high school class with minimal effort. But the rigors of collegiate academics have taken their toll on D'aron. After the first semester, he finds himself with unsatisfactory grades and the threat of academic probation. A meeting with his advisor reveals deeper internal issues. D'aron's advisor, who also made the move from small conservative town to large liberal city, diagnosis the young man's social conundrum. She tells him that his difficulty in reconciling his upbringing with the culture of his new setting is normal, but he must come to terms with these issues to achieve success in his studies.
It is not until an awkward turn at a party that things for D'aron begin to change. A misunderstanding finds D'aron, his roommate Louis Chang, Candice (from Iowa) and black prep school student Charlie being accused of being racially insensitive. From there, the group, 4 Little Indians as they call themselves, become close friends, and it seems that D'aron has overcome his social insecurity. It is an American History class on alternative perspectives that inspires the friends to create a performance piece that makes a political statement. D'aron's hometown, Braggsville, the kind of conservative place where "gay" is used as an insult or joke, holds an annual Civil War re-enactment. The group decides to make their statement at this event. When things don't proceed as expected, the foursome and the entire town of Braggsville are forced to face racial, social, and cultural issues that none of them could have anticipated.
Johnson tackles tough issues and interesting characters to middling results. The central plot and characters are very well conceived and offer natural ways to explore complex social issues. Unfortunately, Johnson's unique authorial voice takes a bit of time to get used to, sometimes making reading this novel a chore. As is so often the case with this subject matter, the mechanics of written language fail to portray the lofty ideas that are discussed. That being said, there is no denying Johnson's craft. Even when the plot becomes muddied by excess points and overtly obvious observations, Johnson manages to steer the story back to a central focus that is both timely and engaging. In the end, Welcome to Braggsville is not a book that everyone will enjoy, but definitely offers the kind of sharp satire and commentary that is difficult to achieve.
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