A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review NPR The New Yorker Los Angeles Times
Oprah Daily Elle The Boston Globe Kirkus Reviews BookPage Electric Literature Library
Journal Commonweal MagazineA Finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction the Aspen Words
Literary Prize and the Kirkus PrizeLong-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize the Andrew
Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Story PrizeA Must-Read: The New York Times
NPR New York The Guardian Los Angeles Times Today Show The Boston Globe Shondaland St.
Louis Post-Dispatch Chicago Review of Books Essence Literary Hub The Millions The
RootExhilarating . . . Brinkley is a writer whose versatility knows no boundaries . . . A gift
of the highest quality. -Mateo Askaripour The New York Times Book ReviewFrom National Book
Award finalist Jamel Brinkley Witness is an elegant insistent narrative of actions taken and
not taken.What does it mean to really see the world around you-to bear witness? And what does
it cost us both to see and not to see?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 with stand up for care for and remember one
another they often fall short and the structures they build around these ambitions and
failures shape their futures as well as the legacies and prospects of their communities and
their 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 while 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 upendingly beautiful as it is artfully 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.
