Full Description
Drawing on the author's experiences, this debut novel follows an interracial blended family living in Chicago in the 1990s.
James Stewart III's powerful debut novel documents the life of a working-class interracial couple and their children in a Chicago suburb in the early 1990s. The father, Jim, is a Black man married to Connie, a white woman with two white sons from a previous marriage. Connie and Jim have three more children together, and the entire family lives in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in a well-to-do, predominantly white community.
Defiant Acts follows the Stewarts through a year in which Jim fights to earn a promotion, the adolescent boys struggle to find themselves, one of the younger children becomes gravely ill, and the parents try to stay afloat in a shaky economy. Within the walls of the Stewarts' home, race doesn't factor, but when the family interacts with the outside world, it is inescapable, a basis for identity and inclusion as well as a spur for exclusion and abuse.
Rooted in the tradition of Black authors from Chicago and drawing on the author's own experiences, Defiant Acts eschews a conventional plot, presenting a series of captured moments—past and present—and multiple perspectives to build a mosaic of the family's lives. In clear, concise prose, Stewart focuses on the complexities of human relationships and on race relations both in and outside the domestic space, placing emphasis on the values that bind this tight-knit family together: solidarity, care, and hope.
Contents
Contents
Stronger
Introductions
Punk
Inventory
Superkick
Blizzard
Warmth
North Dakota
Defense
Crock Pot
Rodney
Flooding
The Kite
Role Model
Edges
Deep Clean
California
Garage Saleing
Giggin'
Dead Ends
Fresh Cut
The Fourth
Adventure
Quantum Leap
The Paint
Funeral
Sticks & Stones
Date Night
Show & Tell
A Little Visit
Black Ranger
Education
Cold Winds
Sick
Complete
Crash
Good Brother
Staying Awake
