From Powells.com
Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.
Staff Pick
For someone who grew up in Portland, this book was neat because I could recognize specific places that are mentioned. What is truly intriguing about The Residue Years, however, is the balance it keeps throughout the entire story of absolute despair and blossoming hope. Somehow this book managed to make me feel both that all the events were destined to be doomed from the start, and that at any moment everything could change for the better. Recommended By Junix S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Winner Whiting Writers' Award
Winner Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction
Finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America's whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the '90s, those streets and beyond had fallen under the shadow of crack cocaine and its familiar mayhem. In his commanding debut autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place, with a breakout voice that's nothing less than extraordinary.
The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace. Grace is just out of a drug treatment program, trying to stay clean and get her kids back. Champ is trying to do right by his mom and younger brothers, and dreams of reclaiming the only home he and his family have ever shared. But selling crack is the only sure way he knows to achieve his dream. In this world of few options and little opportunity, where love is your strength and your weakness, this family fights for family and against what tears one apart.
Review
"A writer to be reckoned with; The Residue Years marks the beginning of a most promising career." Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped
Review
"A fresh new voice in fiction." O, The Oprah Magazine
Review
"Jackson's poetic prose is a joy to read....The ways mother and son grapple with social judgment and limited choices are provocative and timely." Booklist
Review
"I was touched by characters whose lives were often as real for me as my memories of growing up. The language invented to tell their stories engages, challenges, clarifies the American language, claiming it, enlarging it." John Edgar Wideman, author of Fanon, Philadelphia Fire, and Brothers and Keepers
About the Author
Mitchell Jackson was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He holds a Masters of Writing from Portland State and an MFA from New York University. Mitchell teaches writing at NYU, Medgar Evers College, and John Jay College. He also works as a journalist, writing about rap music for Vibe, The Source, and various others. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals, and he is a previous winner of the Hurston Wright Award for College Writers. He is also the author of the original e-book Oversoul: Stories and Essays. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. www.mitchelljackson.com
Powell's Staff on PowellsBooks.Blog
We’ve been talking a lot at Powell’s about the election, our country’s deepening divide, and the challenges ahead of us. One thing we can all agree on is that there’s nowhere we’d rather be working right now than at a bookstore. Our faith in books and their ability to inform...
Read More»
Powell's Staff on PowellsBooks.Blog
No movement in recent history has exposed persistent civil rights violations the way Black Lives Matter has...
Read More»