RaveCleaver MagazineThe ten stories...offer tableaus of Blackness that are as varied as they are vivid. From tale to tale, Nkweti’s genres shift as surely as a living body does, limbs never at a single angle for long. The same assortment of stories that renders a realistic portrait of race and romance within New York City’s Black literary scene delves, with the same intrepid narration, into a crime drama’s layered violence and moral contemplation. Though varied, what anchors these stories within one another’s vicinity is a relentless inquisition of human connectivity ... Nkweti’s commitment to sensory imagery traces trauma as it ricochets between generations, cultures, and families, as it glints in gendered violence, racism (as well as its internalized iterations), and neocolonialism ... Many of these stories prove unique even in their formatting ... The prose itself twins the measured, attention-sustaining adventurism of the worlds it births. The text abounds with colorful metaphor, colloquialism, and a linguistic veering to French, pidgin, and Arabic. Ultimately, each life that Nkweti shapes out for us carries the dents and impressions of the other lives it encounters, brandishing a proof of collision that speaks to a fragile, vicious, irrepressible mortality.
