The Graybar Hotel: Stories - Softcover

Dawkins, Curtis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501162306 ISBN 13: 9781501162305

Verlag: Scribner, 2018

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Críticas:

"The Graybar Hotel by Curtis Dawkins: the best book of short stories by an MFA grad imprisoned for life you'll read this year--or probably ever."
--New York Magazine

"[A] powerful collection of stories about how inmates survive and struggle in prison."
--San Diego Magazine

"A Western Michigan University MFA graduate serving life for a drug-fueled 2005 Kalamazoo murder, Dawkins chronicles the occasionally colorful, often despondent and mostly tedious lives of contemporary inmates ... Dawkins writes empathetic, thoughtful pieces about those who long for the outside."
--Shelf Awareness

"What's freshest and most surprising here is Dawkins's absolute focus on the humanity of those behind bars--of how inmates survive, or don't, as they struggle to maintain self and sanity in the face of the tedium, deprivation, and loneliness of incarceration. A fully realized debut."
--Library Journal, starred review

"Dawkins's tales impress with the authenticity of real-life experience, and his prose is rich in metaphor and imagery ... His often wryly amusing observations about the routines of prison life make him a striking guide for navigating the terrain."
--Publishers Weekly

"Curtis Dawkins draws from his direct experience to paint a picture of jailhouse life in all its grimness. He conveys the repulsive mixture of boredom, stupidity, filthiness, meanness and chronic anxiety that is the prisoner's lot. The inmates are dysfunctional, the structure that houses them authoritarian. This book will scare you straight--or should. But within their cages, Dawkins' prisoners dream--of criminal schemes, drugs, women--and an American world outside the walls. Their avid fantasies burn with a furious light against the bleak institutional background, exploding with ingenuity, pathos and rebellion. In many cases, these outsiders are, like Dawkins himself, artists.
--Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life

"The Graybar Hotel is unlike any other short story collection I've ever read. Dawkins' cast of characters are forever longing for escape--escape from prison, escape from their past, escape from freedom, even. And when the escape is successful, when one reality is traded for another, Dawkins' characters find themselves lost, even pining for what they had in the first place. The Graybar Hotel is not a "prison-book." It is a mirror, held up to our culture of incarceration. It is a testament, a testimony that the people inside prison are as much Americans, as much citizens as their guards, parole officers, and wardens, that there is no outside, that prisons are as much America as pubs, playgrounds, or parks. There is a current of electricity running through this book, a shocking voltage of truth. What an authentic and rare book The Graybar Hotel is."
--Nickolas Butler, internationally bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs, Beneath the Bonfire, and The Hearts of Men

"Almost every one of the 14 short stories in the collection seems to have originated from something Dawkins experienced or witnessed in jail or prison, and almost every one reflects with devastating compassion on the guilt and regrets of the criminals inside ... [The Graybar Hotel is] well-written and worth reading for Dawkins' craft and insight, but it's also an occasion to consider an industry that has little to do with rehabilitation, and that makes it nearly impossible for its participants to recuperate their lives."
--Chicago Tribune

"Dawkins is a wickedly skilled storyteller . . . Despite its subject matter, The Graybar Hotel is ultimately uplifting . . . toughly courageous, unflinching, and unapologetic."
--O, the Oprah Magazine

"[Dawkins's] prison stories are insightful and well written, and they ring true. Dawkins possesses the acquired wisdom of a man who's been there, done that and, unfortunately, is staying there."
--Houston Chronicle

Reseña del editor:

In this “toughly courageous, unflinching, and unapologetic” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut collection, Curtis Dawkins, an MFA graduate and convicted murderer serving life without parole, “takes us inside the worlds of prison and prisoners with stories that dazzle with their humor and insight, even as they describe a harsh and barren existence” (Publishers Weekly).

In Curtis Dawkins’s first short story collection, longlisted for the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal, he offers a window into prison life through the eyes of his narrators and their cellmates. Dawkins reveals the idiosyncrasies, tedium, and desperation of long-term incarceration—he describes men who struggle to keep their souls alive despite the challenges they face.

In “A Human Number,” a man collect-calls strangers just to hear the sounds of the outside world. In “573543,” an inmate recalls his descent into addiction as his prison softball team gears up for an annual tournament. In “Leche Quemada,” an inmate is released and finds freedom to be complex and baffling. Dawkins’s stories are funny and sad, filled with unforgettable detail—the barter system based on calligraphy-ink tattoos, handmade cards, and cigarettes; a single dandelion smuggled in from the rec yard; candy made from powdered milk, water, sugar, and hot sauce. His characters are nuanced and sympathetic, despite their obvious flaws.

The Graybar Hotel is “well-written and worth reading for Dawkins’s craft and insight, but it’s also an occasion to consider an industry that has little to do with rehabilitation, and that makes it nearly impossible for its participants to recuperate their lives” (Chicago Tribune). Dawkins is an extraordinary writer with a knack for metaphor who gives voice to the experience of perhaps the most overlooked members of our society. “His prison stories are insightful and well written, and they ring true. Dawkins possesses the acquired wisdom of a man who’s been there, done that and, unfortunately, is staying there” (Houston Chronicle).

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Scribner
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1501162306
• ISBN 13: 9781501162305
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240