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Published Oct 2022
320 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Making her YA debut, Cherokee writer Andrea L. Rogers takes her place as one of the most striking voices of the horror renaissance that has swept the last decade.
Tsalagi should never have to live on human blood, but sometimes things just happen to sixteen-year-old girls.
Horror fans will get their thrills in this collection – from werewolves to vampires to zombies – all the time-worn horror baddies are there. But so are predators of a distinctly American variety – the horrors of empire, of intimate partner violence, of dispossession. And so too the monsters of Rogers' imagination, that draw upon long-told Cherokee stories – of Deer Woman, fantastical sea creatures, and more.
Following one extended Cherokee family across the centuries, from the tribe's homelands in Georgia in the 1830s to World War I, the Vietnam War, our own present, and well into the future, each story delivers a slice of a particular time period that will leave readers longing for more.
Alongside each story, Cherokee artist and language technologist Jeff Edwards delivers haunting illustrations that incorporate Cherokee syllabary.
But don't just take it from us – award-winning writer of The Only Good Indians and Mongrels Stephen Graham Jones says that "Andrea Rogers writes like the house is on fire and her words are the only thing that can put it out."
Man Made Monsters is a masterful, heartfelt, haunting collection ripe for crossover appeal – just don't blame us if you start hearing things that go bump in the night.
"Spanning generations, Rogers recounts the past, present, and future trials and tribulations of one Cherokee family in this spine-tingling horror collection...Fresh, crisply written text, which alternates between first-, second-, and third-person tellings, artfully tackles themes of colonialism and its effects on entire generations, for a simultaneously frightening and enthralling read." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Exquisite white-on-black line art from Cherokee artist Edwards sets the eerie mood. The use of the Noto Sans Cherokee typeface and Edwards' hand-drawn Cherokee syllabary beautifully integrates written language into the book's design. A creepy and artful exploration of a haunting heritage." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Startling…Will leave readers-adults as well as teens-unsettled, feeling like they have caught a glimpse into a larger world, and like there is a wider one still, just out of sight." - Booklist (starred review)
"Man Made Monsters is a brilliant and expansive journey across time, seen through a Cherokee lens, written by the brilliant and essential voice of Andrea Rogers. This collection is full to the brim with voice and breadth, including but not limited to magic, horror, and fantasy. The book is fun, funny, and dead-serious. It is beautifully written, and it is full of monsters." - Tommy Orange
This information about Man Made Monsters was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andrea L. Rogers is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her stories have appeared in several literary journals. In 2020, Capstone published Mary and the Trail of Tears. Her work has also appeared in You Too? 25 Voices Share Their #METoo Stories from Inkyard Press, Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids from Heartdrum, and in the anthology Allies by DK. Her picture book, called When We Gather, is forthcoming from Heartdrum.
Jeff Edwards, of Vian, OK, is an award-winning Cherokee graphic artist who has worked for the Cherokee Nation for over 20 years. He is a language activist and has worked on numerous projects that have projected the Cherokee language into the global spotlight. He attended Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS and received his Associates Degree in Liberal Arts and completed his Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. His artwork is almost exclusively Cherokee themed, and he prefers using the Cherokee Syllabary as opposed to English to promote the Cherokee language and likes using old cultural concepts but expressing them with modern electronic tools.
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