Among The Wild Mulattos and Other Tales - Softcover

Williams, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1680030183 ISBN 13: 9781680030181

Publisher: Texas Review Press, 2015

Synopsis

Set in the suburbs and cities of the Midwest, Mid-South, and Texas, these stories explore the lives of characters biracial, black, white, and all sorts of in-between. The intersections and collisions of contemporary life are in full effect here, where the distinctions between fast food and fine art, noble and naked ambitions, reality and reality shows have become impossible to distinguish. Read these stories and understand why Steve Yarbrough said Williams “writes like Paul Auster if he were funnier or like Stanley Elkin might have if he’d ever been able to stop laughing.”

" Tom Williams has done the near impossible in penning a book that is both undeniably entertaining and deeply thoughtful, Millhauser meets Bukowski meets Ellison." --Alan Heathcock, author of Volt

“Sure, we need the nudge of category to help us all think straight, but we also need the rangy trickster, Tom Williams, to do the bang-up boundary work of imaginary anthropology in these deadpan dead-on gems. These infiltrating texts take us sideways, through and through, turn us inside-out.” . --Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter
 

About this title

About the Author

TOM WILLIAMS, who earned his Ph.D from the University of Houston, is the author of two books of fiction: The Mimic's Own Voice and Don't Start Me Talkin. Dean of Liberal Arts at University of Central Arkansas, he resides in Conway, Arkansas, with his wife and children.

Review

"It's tempting to compare Williams to other short story writers, not because his work bears their influences, but because he's part of a small group -- Mary Robison, George Singleton, Percival Everett, a few others -- who do exactly what they want to, and have the immense talent to back it up. Among the Wild Mulattos feels vital, essential, not only for the unexpected ways Williams talks about identity, but for his brash, gutsy writing. You could call him an author to watch, but he's really a writer we should have been watching a long time ago," Michael Schaub, NPR Books

The tales Tom Williams has crafted in Among the Wild Mulattos offer complexity without forgetting to entertain, and beauty without sentiment. Like the writer sitting in a booth taking inspiration from fried chicken, this book has something unexpected, yet graceful and vital, to show the world.

Benjamin T. Miller, Colorado Review

"Williams' stories feel new, and if their plots are oriented toward thedisoriented hybridity of the "mulatto," their concerns are universal:what it means to be human, to seek belonging, to err, to want, to long,to feel the impossibility of finding happiness or a home in the world.Surely Williams has had to live his entire life in his own uncertainskin, but this collection never feels autobiographical. For me--amultiracial fellow who's spent much of his life in a two-box world,people-less--these stories resonate, but not because they embody myparticular experience. Williams leaves us richer by implicating all ofus in these stories. Here, at last, is literature's diverse diversity."
Michael Copperman, The Rumpus

About this edition

• Publisher: Texas Review Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1680030183
• ISBN 13: 9781680030181
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192