An elegant, vibrant, startling coming-of-age novel for anyone who has ever felt the shame of being alive
Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she celebrates Kwanzaa, or because she's forbidden from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe it's because she call her father -a housepainter-slash-philosopher - Baba instead of Daddy, or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations from the Creator, for the martyrs and discuss the community.Disgruntled, effortlessly funny and achingly poignant, follows Kenya from West Philadelphia to the suburbs, from public school to private, and from childhood through adolescence, as she grows increasingly disgruntled by her inability to find any place or thing or person that feels like home.A coming-of-age tale, a portrait of Philadelphia in the late eighties and early nineties, and an examination of the impossible double-binds of race, Disgruntled by Asali Solomon is a novel about the desire to rise above the limitations of the narratives we're given and the painful struggle to craft fresh ones we can call our own.
Asali Solomon's first novel, Disgruntled, was a best book of the year at the San Francisco Chronicle and Denver Post. Her first book, Get Down, earned a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, a National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" honor, and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in O Magazine, Vibe, Essence, on NPR, the Paris Review Daily, McSweeney's and several anthologies. Associate Professor, Chair of English, and Director of Creative Writing, Solomon teaches fiction writing and literature of the African Diaspora at Haverford College. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she lives there with her husband and two sons.
