The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You: Stories
240 pages
|Published: 17 Aug 2021
|Editions
|Details
This edition
ISBN: 9780593133408
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Publisher: One World
Publication date: 17 August 2021
Description
A collection of raucous stories that offer a panoramic view of New Orleans from the author of the "stunning and audacious" (NPR) debut novel We Cast a Shadow.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.
In "Beg Borrow Steal," a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after just coming home from prison; in "Ghetto University," a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in "Before I Let You Go," a woman who's been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in "Fast Hands, Fast Feet," an Army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in "Mercury Forges," a flash fiction piece among several in the collection, a group of men hurriedly make their way to a home where an elderly gentleman lives, trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story, a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter, trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.
These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.
In "Beg Borrow Steal," a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after just coming home from prison; in "Ghetto University," a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in "Before I Let You Go," a woman who's been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in "Fast Hands, Fast Feet," an Army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in "Mercury Forges," a flash fiction piece among several in the collection, a group of men hurriedly make their way to a home where an elderly gentleman lives, trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story, a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter, trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.
These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian.
