Testify by Douglas Manuel

Testify by Douglas Manuel

A brave, brilliant debut about the African-American experience in the American Midwest. A contemplation of race, masculinity, religion, and class, Testify in a very personal way confronts some of the most critical issues in today's society. A book of elegiac ambivalence, Testify's speaker often finds himself

“In his breathtaking debut, Testify, Douglas Manuel charts the raw emotional complexities and the impossible daily reckonings that confront a young black man coming of age today in AmericaFaced at every turn with condescending, fixed assumptions about his ‘proper’ role in his community and culture, the speaker faces each indictment with a stunning and searing intelligence. Each powerful testimony in this collection stands as evidence of an eloquent and dramatic new voice in American poetry.”—David St. John, author of The Auroras and Study for the World’s Body

“In Douglas Manuel’s Testify the act of witnessing is by turns burdensome and bittersweet, narrative and lyrical, ecstatic and irreverent. Here the holy words are the ones that offer no easy epiphanies yet grant us a dazzling, off-kilter compassion and a strange, surprising grace. These potent poems testify to those ambivalent moments that might rend or right us, as when an interracial couple drive past a truck with a Confederate flag painted on its back windshield and from which a little boy turns to smile and wave: his ‘blond hair // split down the middle like a Bible / left open to the Book of Psalms.’” —Anna Journey, author of The Atheist Wore Goat Silk

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a MFA from Butler University where he was the Managing Editor of Booth a Journal. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. He was a recipient of the Chris McCarthy Scholarship for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and has been Poetry Editor for Gold Line Press as well as was one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rhino, North American Review, ? The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, Many Mountains Moving, and elsewhere.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781597090452
ISBN 10	159709045X
Title	Testify
Author	Douglas Manuel
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Red Hen Press
Year published	2017-06-08
Number of pages	104
Prizes	Commended for Benjamin Franklin Award (Poetry) 2018
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.