Tragic Magic

Meet Melvin Ellington, a. k. a. Mouth - a Black twenty-something, ex-college radical who has just been released from a five-year prison stretch having been a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.

Back in New York, hungry for freedom and desperate for companionship, Mouth quickly finds himself haunted by his past.

Through a filmic series of flashbacks, we see Mouth's time in prison, his college days and, finally, his earliest high school days. Each street corner, subway ride and run-in with an old flame brings with it the echo of his previous life. The rhythm of blues and jazz is baked into each page, with the sounds of the city - barbershop talk, lively gossip, overheard conversations - imprinted in every word.

Wesley Brown boldly explores magnetic representations of Black masculinity in crisis, with a style that's even more provoking than its subject.