Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets, Takoma, presents T. Geronimo Johnson to discuss his new novel Welcome to Braggsville.Â
Johnson’s first novel, Hold it ‘Til it Hurts, was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. In his second novel, Johnson, a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned his MFA, deploys irony and a wicked satire to send up and take down academia and identity politics. Hailing from the eponymous Georgia town, population 712, D’aron Davenport comes to Berkeley eager to sever his Southern roots. But after he joins up with a diverse group of fellow students, he ends up leading the self-described “4 Little Indians†back to his hometown in a scheme to stage a “performative intervention†before the annual Civil War re-enactment.
Johnson will be in conversation with Ron Charles, The Washington Post book critic and an early enthusiast of Braggsville.