Review
Thai Williams is 19 years old and on the run. Smart enough to go to college, but too loyal to his friends Ray Ray and Snowflake and their ghetto lifestyle to take that step easily, Thai crosses a line when he catches his girl, Sierra, with another man. Someone shoves a gun in his hand and what starts out as a revenge beating suddenly becomes murder. Thai has crossed over to the dark side of his life, but can he cross back again? More importantly, does he want to? Buying himself some breathing space, he takes off to visit his best friend, Enrique, and discovers a lifestyle that seemed impossible in the five-block district of Shaw that had always been his universe. Even in this new and exciting environment, violence is never far away, but Thai has never run from a fight before and he doesn't intend to start now. But this is a different sort of fight. A fight for Thai's soul. The men and women that he meets share their thoughts and feelings, their philosophy and their bodies with him as he struggles to decide which direction he wants his life to go in. In Thai, Kenji Jasper has created a spokesman for disaffected African-American youth. Reading this startlingly honest and bleakly poetic novel, you will find yourself cheering and grieving for Thai in equal measure. A no-frills look into a world where hope is at a premium and dreams can die as easily as people, this is a powerful, moving novel from a new and important young author. (Kirkus UK)
Synopsis
Kenji Jasper has written a haunting portrait of an urban generation, shadowed and often erased by violence but determined to make its mark on the world. Dark is a fresh, first rate African-American coming-of-age debut novel that joins the sensibility of a young James Baldwin to the contemporary subject matter of rap and hip-hop. At 19, Thai Williams is walking a thin line between two worlds. On one side he has his job as a filing clerk for the DC department of Public Works, his girlfriend Sierra, and his plans for going to college. But on the other, darker side there are his friends Snowflake and Ray Ray, men who run the neighbourhood streets constantly dodging the dangers of the crime life and the drug game. But that thin line disappears when Thai walks in on Sierra with another man, whom he eventually kills in a haze of jealousy and confusion. From there Thai finds himself on the run and away from the five-block stretch where he's lived for all of his life. He finds his way to Charlotte, where Enrique, his closest friend of all, had moved in search of a better life.
In the course of the week that follows, Thai encounters a series of men and women who show him aspects of life he never dreamed of in his narrow ghetto existence. All of them are looking for answers, but it is Thai who must find his own path out of the dark - and into the clear light of moral responsibility and repentance for his actions. In his first novel, Kenji Jasper has written a haunting portrait of his own urban generation, shadowed (and often erased) by violence, but determined to make their mark on the world.
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