Witness Stories by Jamel Brinkley

 Book Excerpt:

"A Must-Read: NPR, Los Angeles Times, Vulture, The Boston Globe, Shondaland, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Essence, Literary Hub

From National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley, Witness is an elegant, insistent narrative of actions taken and not taken.

What does it mean to take action? To bear Witness? What does it cost?

In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and city.

In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, and the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness. At the same time, those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon.

With prose as unendingly beautiful as it is artfully and seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.:

Title:  Witness Stories

Author:  Jamel Brinkley

Publisher:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Reviewed By:  Arlena Dean

Rating:  Four

Review:

"Witness Stories" by Jamel Brinkley

My Sentiments:  

These were quite a collection of various stories taking place in New York City of different ten challenges from 'mental illness, tragic, dementia, old age, gentrification, failed family relationships, family conflicts,  dead-end jobs, failed romances, and poverty,' all with different perspectives.    

This author gave the reader some brilliant stories; each collection of short stories will give one a lot to think of long after this literary read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar Straus & Giroux for the ARC for the read.