Welcome to Braggsville: A Novel

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEED

WINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment—a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer.

Welcome to Braggsville. The City that Love Built in the Heart of Georgia. Population 712

Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D’aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berzerkeley, the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends: Louis, a “kung-fu comedian" from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder claiming Native roots from Iowa; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago. They dub themselves the “4 Little Indians.”

But everything changes in the group’s alternative history class, when D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded “Patriot Days.” His announcement is met with righteous indignation, and inspires Candice to suggest a “performative intervention” to protest the reenactment. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the 4 Little Indians descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences.

With the keen wit of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and the deft argot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more.

A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEED

WINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment—a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer.

Welcome to Braggsville. The City that Love Built in the Heart of Georgia. Population 712

Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D’aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berzerkeley, the nineteen-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends: Louis, a “kung-fu comedian" from California; Candice, an earnest do-gooder claiming Native roots from Iowa; and Charlie, an introspective inner-city black teen from Chicago. They dub themselves the “4 Little Indians.”

But everything changes in the group’s alternative history class, when D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded “Patriot Days.” His announcement is met with righteous indignation, and inspires Candice to suggest a “performative intervention” to protest the reenactment. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal, and their own misguided ideas about the South, the 4 Little Indians descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses, and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences.

With the keen wit of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and the deft argot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, T. Geronimo Johnson has written an astonishing, razor-sharp satire. Using a panoply of styles and tones, from tragicomic to Southern Gothic, he skewers issues of class, race, intellectual and political chauvinism, Obamaism, social media, and much more.

A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.

“A stunning achievement with no clear literary precedent. Welcome to Braggsville . . . is one of the most searing, shocking looks at racial issues and campus activism in a long time.” - Men’s Journal, Best Books of 2015

“This shockingly funny story, longlisted for the National Book Award, pricks every nerve (on both sides) of the American body politic.” - Kansas City Star, Best Fiction of 2015

“You must read T. Geronimo Johnson. He is awesome.” - Sherman Alexie

“You must read T. Geronimo Johnson. He is awesome.” - Sherman Alexie via Twitter

“In Welcome to Braggsville, T. Geronimo Johnson has written a brilliant, blistering aria of an America divided by race, privilege, and politics. It’s like a year’s worth of The Daily Show compressed into a narrative that recent headlines have made even more heartbreakingly resonant.” - Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Johnson’s writing is often brilliantly comic, and Braggsville is a welcome new kind of southern novel.” - Time magazine, Top 10 Books of 2015

“Johnson’s writing is often brilliantly comic, and Braggsville is a welcome new kind of southern novel.” - Time, Top 10 Books of 2015

“The academic world has long been an easy punching bag for much of the American public, but rarely has there been a moment where it has seemed so ripe for satire. Enter T. Geronimo Johnson and his biting, clever novel, winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which cuts to the core of hypocrisy in those ivory towers. Following four Berkeley students bent on a bit of guerrilla theater at a Civil War re-enactment in Georgia, Johnson never runs out of targets for his satirical pen, from Old South apologists to solipsistic students in the grip of self-righteous political correctness.” - The Daily Beast, Best Fiction of 2015

“Biting, clever . . . Following four Berkeley students bent on a bit of guerrilla theater at a Civil War re-enactment in Georgia, Geronimo Johnson never runs out of targets for his satirical pen, from Old South apologists to solipsistic students in the grip of self-righteous political correctness.” - The Daily Beast, Best Fiction of 2015

“Satire of the sharpest sort and effectively upends each and every one of the stereotypes with which we’re all familiar. Nobody is safe from Johnson’s brilliant words, and while the end result can be an at times unsettling look at our society and its many, many flaws, it is also a wholly necessary one.” - Brooklyn Magazine, Best Books of 2015

“A stunning achievement with no clear literary precedent. Welcome to Braggsville . . . is one of the most searing, shocking looks at racial issues and campus activism in a long time.” - Men’s Journal, Best Books of 2015

“Full of virtuosic sentences and coruscating satire . . . a brilliant and necessary read.” - Buzzfeed Books

“Full of virtuosic sentences and coruscating satire . . . a brilliant and necessary read.” - Buzzfeed, Best Books of 2015

“There were a lot of wonderful novels about race and social justice in America, but this stuck with me the most, in part because of its audacious premise—college students brimming with privilege and information decide to stage a mock lynching in a Southern town, with catastrophic results—but also because of the bone-deep truth of Johnson’s satire of academia, which seemed to ring more true as the year progressed.” - Sarah Weinman, Publisher's Lunch, Favorite Books of 2015

“Johnson is a fearless writer, and Welcome to Braggsville is one of the most provocative, daring novels we’ve seen in a while. . . . An unsettling story that forces us to examine our own prejudices and what, if anything, we’re doing to make America more tolerant.” - Chicago Tribune

“Welcome to Braggsville is a comic, rollicking, and biting story about the cultural clash between the rural South and a bastion of contemporary politically sensitive liberalism.” - Christian Science Monitor

Welcome to Braggsville is a comic, rollicking, and biting story about the cultural clash between the rural South and a bastion of contemporary politically sensitive liberalism.” - Christian Science Monitor

“The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you’ll read this year is called Welcome to Braggsville. . . . T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it’s acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic . . . Welcome to Braggsville. It’s about time.” - Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Amusing . . . unpredictable. An ambitious book, and [Johnson] handles with aplomb the complexities of growing-up, with its cumbrous transitions. . . . Despite the story’s dark turn, there’s humor in the wonder of oracular pronouncements.” - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Four college students’ attempt to protest Southern folkways goes awry in a novel that blurs the line between academic satire and social realism . . . A rambunctious, irreverent yet still serious study of the long reach of American institutional racism.” - Kirkus Reviews

“The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you’ll read this year. T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it’s acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic. Welcome to Braggsville. It’s about time.” - The Washington Post

“As daring a literary high-wire act as has come along in some time. . . . This is literary showmanship at its most provocative and daring. And one of the most daring things about the novel is that it’s frequently and unabashedly funny . . . [Johnson] possesses a satirical gaze that is as merciless as it is meticulous: He misses nothing. . . . [A] volatile mix of stinging satire, linguistic pyrotechnics and heartbreaking narrative.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“As daring a literary high-wire act as has come along in some time. . . . frequently and unabashedly funny . . . [A] volatile mix of stinging satire, linguistic pyrotechnics and heartbreaking narrative.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word . . . A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, Welcome to Braggsville reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead.” - David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word . . . A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, Welcome to Braggsville reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Both funny and frightful . . . Johnson deftly pokes dark fun at a wide swath of culture, high and low. . . . But as 21st-century American culture crisscrosses with the nation’s history, Johnson’s story evokes more than satirical humor. A sense of conscience and moral purpose takes shape at the heart of the book.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“Both funny and frightful . . . But as 21st-century American culture crisscrosses with the nation’s history, Johnson’s story evokes more than satirical humor. A sense of conscience and moral purpose takes shape at the heart of the book.” - Associated Press

“Southern Gothic meets West Coast political correctness with hilarious results in Johnson’s new satirical novel. . . . An odyssey through Waffle Houses, evangelical churches and backyard barbecue’s ensues, with attitudes about everything from race to social media getting skewered.” - New York Post

“Southern Gothic meets West Coast political correctness with hilarious results in Johnson’s new satirical novel. . . . An odyssey through Waffle Houses, evangelical churches and backyard barbecue’s ensues, with attitudes about everything from race to social media getting skewered.” - New York Post

“Johnson spares no faction in his biting indictment of American society, a sprawling tapestry of different styles as complex as the issues he explores. . . . Funny and wrenching, this coming-of-age story leaves one reeling but satisfied.” - Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

“A partial list of great American writers whose names came to mind as I was reading T. Geronimo Johnson’s new novel, Welcome to Braggsville: Tom Wolfe, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, H.L. Mencken, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison, Ralph Ellison, Ralph Ellison. Johnson’s timely novel is a tipsy social satire about race and the oh-so-fragile ties that bind disparate parts of this country into an imperfect and restless union. It’s an ambitious book that not only wants to say something big about America, but aims to do so in a big American voice that contains multitudes . . . [It’s] Confederates in the Attic meets A Confederacy of Dunces . . . The novel ends with a tour-de-force riff on black history, which, Johnson writes, ‘in its myriad inversions, loops, whorls, coils, corkscrews, spirals; from slavery to Jim Crow to the Carceral State [is] the helix that stitches the U.S. of A.’s social DNA.’ Welcome to Braggsville isn’t quite Invisible Man or White Noise, but it gets within hailing distance of their heights. It’s as American as chattel slavery and Lenny Bruce Lee.” - Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

“Great American writers whose names came to mind as I was reading Welcome to Braggsville: Tom Wolfe, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, H.L. Mencken, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison. Johnson’s timely novel is a tipsy social satire . . . a tour de force.” - NPR's Fresh Air

“Transcendence is what Geronimo Johnson achieves in this remarkable novel. Every racial assumption is both acknowledged and challenged in ways at times hilarious, at other times poignant. Welcome to Braggsville is ambitious, wise, and brave.” - Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena

“Geronimo Johnson is a fearless and driven young writer of dazzling gifts. His books map American multiculture as a poignant and twisted human comedy in which nobody comes out clean. . . . surprising, heartbreaking, tragicomic, and deeply disturbing.” - Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award-winning author of Lord of Misrule

“Reading this novel is not unlike listening to an erudite satirist play the dozens in a marathon performance . . . Organic, plucky, smart, Welcome to Braggsville is the funniest sendup of identity politics, the academy and white racial anxiety to hit the scene in years.” - New York Times Book Review

“The unsettling racial satire America needs right now . . . Johnson turns this tale of a misbegotten college student protest of a Civil War reenactment into a subtle exploration of identity, personal narrative, collective narrative, racism, academic elitism and far more. . . . [B]y turns silly, somber and sharply satirical . . . Welcome to Braggsville doesn’t offer easy polemic or easier sentimentality, but a deep dive into the American race problem as muddled, terrifying, and absurd as the reality.” - Huffington Post

“The unsettling racial satire America needs right now . . . Welcome to Braggsville doesn’t offer easy polemic or easier sentimentality, but a deep dive into the American race problem as muddled, terrifying, and absurd as the reality.” - Huffington Post

“Johnson dresses his social criticism in lively, colloquial writing . . . On one side he depicts a reactionary South unwilling to fully reckon with its history and terrified of the slightest outside scrutiny. But his sharpest elbows are reserved for left-wing academia, which, despite its air of moral superiority, leaves its charges haplessly unable to comprehend the world outside the cloister of the classroom.” - Wall Street Journal

“Stunning and poignant . . . Johnson’s novel may not have the answer to the problems he’s addressing, [but] it’s clear that he’s asking the right questions.” - LA Review of Books

“Stunning and poignant . . . Johnson’s novel may not have the answer to the problems he’s addressing, [but] it’s clear that he’s asking the right questions.” - LA Review of Books

“Madcap, satirical, sometimes profane and uncanny . . . Welcome to Braggsville is a deeply pleasurable read for the sheer wonder of Johnson’s prose, but a deeply disturbing read for the truth it reveals about us.” - BookPage

“One of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year.” - Kevin Brockmeier, award-winning author of The Brief History of the Dead

“In exuberant prose, Johnson takes aim at a host of issues, gleefully satirizing political opportunists, social media, and cultural mores. . . . a provocative exploration of contemporary America that is likely to be a hit with adventurous readers.” - Booklist

“Johnson’s observations about race are both piercing and witty, making this edgy novel so much more complex than a send-up of the South and liberal academe. . . . those with a love for linguistic romps will want to take on this literary dark comedy.” - Library Journal

“[Welcome to Braggsville] flirts with stereotypes, lingers in the familiar, then pivots to afford the characters their humanity . . . Reading this novel is not unlike listening to an erudite satirist play the dozens in a marathon performance . . . But the satire leaping off these pages is not hate, nor the dead-end cynical variety that withers with a sneer. Here, the observations have too much wit and knowing, the characters too much soul, for Johnson’s story to feel trapped in callow hipster irony . . . Organic, plucky, smart, Welcome to Braggsville is the funniest sendup of identity politics, the academy and white racial anxiety to hit the scene in years . . . [Johnson] knows just which dark corners to expose, which cultural buttons to push, which ironies to illuminate and how to whirl an affecting yarn all the while.” - New York Times Book Review

“Geronimo Johnson is a fearless and driven young writer of dazzling gifts. His books map American multiculture as a poignant and twisted human comedy in which nobody comes out clean. . . . surprising, heartbreaking, tragicomic, and deeply disturbing.” - Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award-winning author of Lord of Misrule

“A rollicking satire . . . Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant.” - O Magazine

“A rollicking satire . . . Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant.” - O Magazine

“Ghastly and funny and gloriously provocative . . . Johnson’s prose is by turns scathing dark humor, soaring lyricism, and a quietly devastating analysis of every species of injustice. The result is a kind of mind-melting poetry—a linguistic electroconvulsive therapy for the reader. This book will wake you up!” - Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia!, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“Transcendence is what Geronimo Johnson achieves in this remarkable novel. Every racial assumption is both acknowledged and challenged in ways at times hilarious, at other times poignant. Welcome to Braggsville is ambitious, wise, and brave.” - Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena, finalist for the PEN/Faulkner

“Ghastly and funny and gloriously provocative . . . Johnson’s prose is by turns scathing dark humor, soaring lyricism, and a quietly devastating analysis of every species of injustice. The result is a kind of mind-melting poetry—a linguistic electroconvulsive therapy for the reader. This book will wake you up!” - Karen Russell, New York Times bestselling author of Swamplandia!

“Combines Ben Fountain’s steely political eye, Junot Diaz’s pop-infused dogma, and Toni Morrison’s sense of social justice through historical reckoning. Big, shiny literary prizes were created for books like this one.” - Wiley Cash, bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home

“Combines the intellectual urgency of a satire with the emotional resonance of a tragedy. Welcome to Braggsville is as smart as it is subversive, and as bleakly hilarious as it is deeply necessary.” - Jennifer duBois, award-winning author of A Partial History of Lost Causes

“DeLilloesque for its orgiastic pop-culture roiling. This is a virtuoso performance by one of our strongest new voices.” - Richard Katrovas, award-winning poet and author of Scorpio Rising

“Brilliant, wildly satirical, and also deeply sobering. The story looms larger than life. At every turn, the impasses Johnson shows us are our own.” - Tess Taylor, award-winning poet and author of The Forage House