The World Doesn't Require You

June 15, 2019
The 21st-century surge of African American voices continues with these mischievous, relentlessly inventive stories whose interweaving content swerves from down-home grit to dreamlike grotesque. Cross River, Maryland, rural and suburban at once, exists only in the imagination of its inventor. And in his debut collection, Scott manages to make this region-of-the-mind at once familiar and mysterious, beginning with Cross River's origins as a predominantly African American community established by leaders of the only successful slave revolt--which never really happened. Nor for that matter were there ever any sightings of God doling out jelly beans at Easter time in Cross River, as chronicled in the opener, "David Sherman, the Last Son of God," whose main character is a guitar prodigy struggling through his fraught relations with local clergy and other pious folk to play the sounds only he can hear. ("God," David remembers somebody telling him, "answers all prayers and sometimes His answer is no.") In another story, Tyrone, a doctoral candidate in cultural studies at mythical Freedman's University, submits a thesis positing that the practice of knocking on strangers' doors and running away is rooted in black slave insurrection; he recruits a friend for his thesis's practical application with lamentable results. There are also a pair of science fiction stories, set in a futuristic Cross River, in which the customs--and abuses--of antebellum slavery are replicated by humans on robots and cyborgs, who, over time, resent their treatment enough to plot rebellion. And there's a novella, Special Topics in Loneliness Studies, chronicling an academic year at the aforementioned Freedman's University during which professors and students alike struggle with their deepest, darkest emotions. Even before that climactic performance, you've figured out that Cross River is meant to be a fun-house mirror sending back a distorted, disquietingly mordant reflection of African American history, both external and psychic. Somehow, paraphrasing one of Scott's characters, it all manages to sound made-up and authentic at the same time. Mordantly bizarre and trenchantly observant, these stories stake out fresh territory in the nation's literary landscape.

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Starred review from June 24, 2019
In 11 stories and a novella, Scott returns to the setting of his debut collection, Insurrections: fictional Cross River, Md., which, in an alternate history, is the location of the only successful slave revolt in America. Most stories are set in the present day; the prose is energetic and at times humorous—often uncomfortably so—as stories interrogate racist tropes. “The Electric Joy of Service” and “Mercury in Retrograde” recast the history of master, slave, and revolt in stories about intelligent robots designed with the facial features of lawn jockeys that fail to behave as programmed. In “David Sherman, the Last Son of God,” David, the last (and least exalted) son of God, tries to redeem himself by leading a gospel band at his elder brother’s church. And in the concluding novella, “Special Topics in Loneliness Studies,” set at Cross River’s historically black Freedman’s University, the narrator plots the downfall of his departmental colleague, whose course syllabus and writing assignments grow increasingly entangled with his personal life. Throughout, the characters’ experiences contrast the relative safety of Cross River with the more hostile ground of the once-segregated towns that surround it. It’s clear, however, that threats—whether they’re siren-like water-women, academic saboteurs, or brutal family traditions—can arise anywhere. Scott’s bold and often outlandish imagination makes for stories that may be difficult to define, but whose emotional authenticity is never once in doubt.

Starred review from July 1, 2019
Reminiscent of classic isolated-world fantasies like The Martian Chronicles (1950) and Kirinyaga (1998), Scott's linked-story collection, following his prize-winning Insurrections (2016), imagines the all-Black town of Cross River, peopled by descendants of the only successful slave revolt in U.S. history (a fine bit of fantasy right there). The Cross Riverians treasure their communal folklore, including a tormented poet, haunted woods, carnivorous screecher birds, and the treacherous Water Women rising naked from the depths, shifting forms to tantalize and then to crush. Equally terrifying is the adjacent all-white town of Port Yooga, which haunts the Cross Riverians in ways that feel uncomfortably familiar. Cross River denizens include robotic slaves infected with the murderous rage of rebellion, except for one with a patch to block the disease of history. Go on being content. Riverbeat artists vie for dominance at The Temple, a place of musical worship and obsession. Insurrection Day is a time for mastering the bluestream, an out-of-body experience in which escaping slaves could literally turn themselves into smoke. Scott's themes of black cultural paranoia and the destabilizing power of art, sexuality, and racial trauma combine in Special Topics in Loneliness Studies, in which two alienated professors at Freedman University pursue a self-destructive assault on academic hypocrisy. Scott's imagery and unique voice blend horror, satire, and magical realism into an intoxicating brew.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 16, 2019

In this collection of 12 stories, Scott imagines the magical, disturbing world of Cross River, where aquatic female phantoms emerge from the river's depths to seduce unsuspecting lovers to death beneath the waves. First seen in the prize-winning Insurrections, the town was reputedly founded by leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt. In "David Sherman, the Last Son of God," God is from Cross River. Not metaphorical God--actual, literal God. In this musically themed story, reminiscent of Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," two brothers must come to terms with themselves and with each other. "The Temple of Practical Arts" is a bizarre tale of a music cult that comes to a violent end. There are a couple of send-ups of academia: in "The Nigger Knockers," two goofy academics, in the guise of researchers, pound on random doors, then run and hide and observe the puzzled, sometimes angry reactions. Academics at odds with political correctness will appreciate the ironic tone of "Special Topics in Loneliness Studies," a novella in the form of a college course that documents one professor's disastrous exercise in self-pity. Like Nabokov's Pale Fire, "Special Topics" mocks the studied literary analysis of academe with both seriousness and humor. VERDICT In a narrative playing fast and loose with grammatical convention, Scott offers a strongly developed sense of place that, fantastical though it may be, is evocative of Anderson and Faulkner. [See Prepub Alert, 2/4/19.]--Michael Russo, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

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