Welcome to Braggsville

October 27, 2014
In his second novel, Johnson (Hold It ’Til It Hurts) delivers a funny and tragic coming-of-age story that spares no one its satirical eye. D’aron Little May Davenport, a misfit in his small Georgia town, enrolls at UC Berkeley to get as far away from home as he can. His new roommate, Louis Chang, is an irrepressible fellow completely at home in California, whose fearless determination to be a stand-up comedian offers a “refreshing antidote to the somber, tense mood sweeping campus.” Soon they meet Candice, a pretty white Iowan with hair that “glowed like butter on burned toast,” and Charlie, a black prep school kid, while they are all being scolded for supposed insensitivity at a dorm party. They quickly become close and call themselves the “4 Little Indians.” When D’aron mentions that Braggsville has an annual Civil War reenactment in their American history class, Candice and Louis persuade the group to stage a “performative intervention” over spring break. This is D’aron’s story, told from his perspective, but there’s a secondary voice, an impish interloper, challenging D’aron and the reader to delve deeper, asking again and again, “Por qué?” Johnson’s prose has a sketched-out and dreamlike quality, a private shorthand that adds to the feeling of intimacy, an apt trick when dealing with subject matter like race and class. This ambitious novel stumbles when it departs from its central story, which should be enough: young people clumsily wielding their new tools of critical theory to impress themselves and each other, without fully understanding the effects of their actions.

December 1, 2014

When Braggsville, GA, resident Daron Davenport goes to college in Berkeley, CA, he might as well have gone to another country, so foreign does he feel. However, he's made to feel at home by some students he befriends at a party: Caucasian Candice, who claims Native American blood; Louis, a Malaysian comedian; and Charlie, a gay African American. Inspired by one of their classes, the friends decide to spend their spring break in Daron's hometown, where the annual reenactment of the Civil War will allow them to stage a "performative intervention"--meaning, in this case, a lynching. This scheme has "Bad Idea" written all over it, and the resulting melee reverberates for years to come. VERDICT Johnson's (Hold It 'Til It Hurts) observations about race are both piercing and witty, making this edgy novel so much more complex than a send-up of the South and liberal academe. Johnson is at his best when he's the most straightforward; chapters that take off in stream-of-consciousness Southern dialect unnecessarily confuse the story. But those with a love for linguistic romps will want to take on this literary dark comedy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/11/14.]--Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014

Johnson got a good start with Hold It 'Til It Hurts, a small-press debut nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award, but this second novel looks like an ambitious leap upward. White Georgia country boy D'aron Davenport is out of his depth at Berkley until he befriends kung-fu California comedian Louis, earnest social crusader Candice, and inner-city black Chicagoan Charlie. When D'aron mentions that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, Candice proposes a "performative intervention." With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2014
Four college students' attempt to protest Southern folkways goes awry in a novel that blurs the line between academic satire and social realism. D'aron, the hero of the second novel by Johnson (Hold It 'Til It Hurts, 2012), was raised in the small Georgia town of Braggsville, where he routinely absorbed homophobic abuse. So when he makes his escape to the University of California, Berkeley, he's gratified by the atmosphere of tolerance. (Even if the definitions of tolerant behavior seem endlessly belabored: At one party, students apply dot stickers to the places on their bodies that are acceptable to touch.) D'aron quickly befriends Louis, an Asian aspiring comedian, Candice, an Iowa-born woman who claims to be part Native American, and Charlie, a black athlete. The quartet's shared interest in social protest inspires them to head to Braggsville, where they plan to interrupt a Civil War re-enactment by staging the whipping and hanging of a slave. The novel's opening third plays much of this as comedy, pitting college kids giddy on leftist jargon against retrograde Dixie, but the plan goes badly awry: Louis (in the role of the slave) winds up dead, and Candice (as slavemaster) is distraught, though what actually happened is deliberately vague. As D'aron falls under scrutiny from the town for concocting the plan, he's forced to contemplate the racist underpinnings of Braggsville society and ponder what use his education is (or isn't) when confronting it. Johnson is supremely savvy at capturing the students' ideological earnestness, finding the humor in academic jargon (a faux glossary is included), and exploring the tense divides between blacks and whites in the South. And though the reader might occasionally feel whipsawed by Johnson's shifts in tone from comedy to tragedy, the swerving seems appropriate to the complexity of its theme. A rambunctious, irreverent yet still serious study of the long reach of American institutional racism.

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December 1, 2014
In his second novel, after Hold It 'til It Hurts (2012), Johnson continues his unique inquiry into questions of race and class, this time with a satiric edge. Southerner D'aron Davenport is having a tough time adjusting in his freshman year at Berkeley (aka Berzerkeley). Then he falls in with fellow misfits Candace, a fresh-faced Iowan who claims Native American heritage; aspiring comic Louis; and black prep-school grad Charlie. When D'aron reveals in history class that his hometown holds an annual Civil War reenactment, his friends decide to stage a performative intervention as a form of protest. However, weighed down by their misconceptions about the South as well as their hyperliberal, overly intellectualized theories about race and history, the students find that their actions have tragic, unintended consequences. In exuberant prose, Johnson takes aim at a host of issues, gleefully satirizing political opportunists, social media, and cultural mores. If, at times, Johnson's ambition causes him to tackle too many subjects at once, this is nevertheless a provocative exploration of contemporary America that is likely to be a hit with adventurous readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)