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Martha's Daughter is the brilliant and influential author David Haynes's first short story collection and the first time that Haynes's stories have ever been assembled in one volume.
Steeped in everyday gossip and lives, this collection ranges from the magically real life of a city's crumbling superhero to a rundown motel whose long-term guests are lucky to call home. In the titular novella the first hours are chronicled after Cynthia finds out her mother has died. What we learn is that Cynthia is a woman who has been bullied by her mother's overbearing opinions, her disdain for difference, her respectability politics, and her outdated beliefs about how men and women should relate to one another. Martha's death is less a catalyst for Cynthia's grief than an opportunity to free herself of a burden too long endured.
The sixth in McSweeney's Of the Diaspora series, Martha's Daughter is another record in David's oeuvre, of the people and places he's been recording since the beginning of his career, some thirty years ago. With its full-circle connection to Haynes's previous novels, Martha's Daughter is guaranteed to enthrall longtime fans and new readers alike.
"Haynes untangles the pretensions and biases of his Black characters in this masterful collection. […] It's a knockout." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Haynes' first collection of stories is a treasure trove of warmth, smarts, and wisdom." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"David Haynes is a master storyteller―intelligent, insightful, generous, and wickedly funny. Martha's Daughter is a delight from beginning to end." ―Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar
"Martha's Daughter tells the stories of women whose ambitions of a better future for themselves are by turns fostered and frustrated by women close to them. David Haynes brings these relationships to life with great sensitivity, rare beauty, and sharp wit. This book is an absolute triumph." ―Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account
"All of the pieces in Martha's Daughter offer this type of delicious, raw confrontation, between not only characters but the worlds those characters represent… Haynes's exquisite sense of structure leaves readers breathless with joy." ―Jacinda Townsend, author of Trigger Warning
This information about Martha's Daughter 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.
David Haynes is the founder of Kimbilio, a retreat for fiction writers of the African diaspora. Now in its ninth year, Kimbilio boasts a roster of today's most celebrated talent in fiction including LaToya Watkins, Jamel Brinkley, Rion Amilcar Scott and Jonathan Escoffery. David is also an emeritus professor of English at Southern Methodist University, where he directed the creative writing program for ten years. Since 1996 he has taught regularly in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Several of his short stories have been read and recorded for the National Public Radio series "Selected Shorts."
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