Milk, Blood, Heat (2020) by Dantiel W. Moniz

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Milk, Blood, Heat (2020)

by Dantiel W. Moniz

2771 Monument Road, Jacksonville, Florida

Florida: 6/21

    Besides this novel and the other novel from Jacksonville on this list (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw), the only thing I know about Jacksonville is that it has a professional football team. Before the 1,001 Novels project I doubt I would have been able to pick it out on a blank map of Florida.  Looking at a map of Florida now, I would have thought is was closer to Tallahassee or Tampa Bay.   It doesn't come across well in Milk, Blood, Heat, a debut collection of short stories by an African American woman with links to McSweeney's, and the prose is that of a crisp stylist.  Moniz's characters are at the margins, though like other contemporary writers of literary fiction from all over the United States, the margins seem to be the place to be.  It was very refreshing to read an entire book from this chapter where race is explored in terms over than overt day-to-day oppression and stultifying racism.  I get the sense that Florida is more of a promised land than anything else for African Americans in the southeast, a refuge for those who wanted something than the Atlanta metropole.