1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Welcome to Braggsville (2015)
by T. Geronimo Johnson
Braggsville, Georgia
Georgia: 21/23
It took me 3 attempts to complete Welcome to Braggsville, which is putatively a satire/comic novel about the misadventures of four Berkely undergraduates who return to the small southern town where one of them (white) was raised to stage a performative protest at the yearly Confederate Day's Re-Enactment festival. First, I checked out the Audiobook, which was insufferable. Then, I checked out the E-book, which I didn't even attempt. Finally, I got the hardback version from the library. I found the entire novel insufferable, although I do see why it got the National Book Award longlist and won some minor awards. I'd have to include Johnson in a literary cohort with other African American/satirical/funny authors like Paul Beatty and Percival Everett- both of whom have won major literary awards in the past decade.
I am in favor of African American authors who have moved beyond the poverty-porn, childhood abuse drama that publishers continue to favor- any attempt to move beyond that milieu is interesting to me. Here, however, I found the characters flat. Johnson's main character is a white southerner- he has some good quips but generally is an uninteresting guy, as are his friends. It's a difficult book to describe without wrecking the plot but I will say I did not laugh a single time reading this comic novel.
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