We Are A Haunting, Tyriek White
We Are A Haunting, Tyriek White
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We Are A Haunting
A Novel

Author: Tyriek White

Narrator: James Jones, Machelle Williams, Arischa Frierson

Unabridged: 8 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/23/2023


Synopsis

2023 First Novel Prize - Winner"What a beautiful, haunting and hued narrative of American living. I’m in love with this story and the way Tyriek White breathes life into these characters." —Jacqueline Woodson, MacArthur Fellow and author of Another Brooklyn
A poignant debut for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Jamel Brinkley, We Are a Haunting follows three generations of a working class family and their inherited ghosts: a story of hope and transformation.
In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.
In the present, an expulsion from school forces Colly across town where, feeling increasingly detached and disenchanted with the condition of his community, he begins to realize that he must, ultimately, be accountable to the place he is from. After college, having forged an understanding of friendship, kinship, community, and how to foster love in places where it seems impossible, Colly returns to East New York to work toward addressing structural neglect and the crumbling blocks of New York City public housing he was born to; discovering a collective path forward from the wreckages of the past. A supernatural family saga, a searing social critique, and a lyrical and potent account of displaced lives, We Are a Haunting unravels the threads connecting the past, present, and future, and depicts the palpable, breathing essence of the neglected corridors of a pulsing city with pathos and poise.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jasmine

We Are a Haunting is a lyrical literary debut with a sprinkling of magical realism. It follows three generations of New Yorkers over thirty years. Grandma Audrey lives in Brooklyn and is on the verge of losing her apartment. Before she passed, her daughter Key could speak to the dead. Key’s son Coll......more

Goodreads review by nastya

“we are a haunting” is a story of a black family in brooklyn throughout several decades with a hint of magical realism. some of the women in this family are able to commune with the dead, but it is not a central part of this novel. each character has a very distinct voice and they feel very develope......more

Goodreads review by Hannah

"Maybe we belonged here, in America, deserved nothing more than to be exiled to this far corner of the world. Halfway living and halfway dying. Even in death we are not part of this place. We are a haunting." I thought I could simply dive into this book knowing little more about it than the fact that......more

Goodreads review by JoAnn

We Are A Haunting is a poetic song, like a siren that lured me into its world. Through the eyes of three generations of a black family living in New York City: Colly, Key, and Audrey, and the unraveling of their lives in a world rife with systemic racism, poverty, violence, grief, loss, readers are......more