Give my love to the savages are nine shorts stories that focus on Black or biracial men. These stories touch on real black men lives from the lost ones to the successful ones. These stories gives you so much dynamics, you have the characters where you just want to hug and nurture like your child and then you have the ones that you just want to punch in the face like Richard Dickerson. I enjoyed it all around and I recommend this short story collection to all the black men.

The title...timely. The cover art...perfect. The stories within...just okay. Give My Love to the Savages is a collection of fiction stories centered around a Black man's life. Not just any Black man though. It is told in scenes of every time he's been called the N-word. Some are odd and absurd; others are very realistic. Yet each captured the Black experience in different phases and classes of life.

Happy Belated Pub Day, Chris Stuck! Give My Love to the Savages is now available.

~LiteraryMarie

I seriously doubted that I'd get deeply enmeshed in this book because Race. Such a stupid, racist thought...and so untrue in the end. I feel vindicated in continuing to prosecute my ongoing battle against the ossification of my brain. Why, I even read another YA book recently and y'all *know* how much I don't like teenagers. Even gay ones.

But this collection, now, this is the stuff I think I'll find every time I try something fresh. I am so often disappointed...not always the author's fault...that, when I find writers like Author Stuck I'm a little wary. "Is this the only one? Can and/or will he do more, get even better?" I'm hoping he can, and will, because a writer who looks at the world from his oddball angle is a deep pleasure to read.

The blow-by-blow list is on my blog: tinyurl.com/d2mhutr

This book was INCREDIBLE. I couldn't put my phone down as I was reading it. My heartstrings weren't just tugged; they were yanked. It was so well-written and the cover is immaculate.

Stuck’s characters don’t care what you think and move through the world with an almost laughable self-righteousness. This book is maybe for a male reader; one who has more mental space for the failings & braggadocio of mediocre, damaged men who want to be heard.

I kept reading though. It’s so damn readable. I keep reading because I wanted a right to be angry at the brashness with which he wrote about race and sexism, the audacity these characters had to exist in these ways with no one correcting them. Or really, that they wouldn’t care. I guess there’s honesty in that, examining the caricature of “Difficult Men” and working to understand the perspective of folks we’d typically walk away from.

The heart of these stories center on an expansive male gaze which on the surface appear to be random glimpses of fictional experiences (sometimes karmic in nature) -- there are views from a myriad of multi-ethnic Black men of varying ages, education, political affiliations, and socio-economic backgrounds. However nothing is random - there is purpose and structure in this collection and when taken as a whole, it offers a dose of judiciousness and encourages reflection based on the relatability (or familiarity) factor within each story.

For example, in the first story, the narrator recalls specific moments of his life when he is called the n-word and reflects on how he handled the situation as a child and how his thoughts, actions, and attitude about the word has changed/evolved throughout his life. In Lake No Negro, a man relocates to the Pacific Northwest to escape a bad relationship and finds himself contemplating his integrity and moral center when propositioned with a lucrative offer steeped in racially-based sexual stereotypes and social taboos. The title story contains complex issues surrounding a privileged bi-racial man with unresolved past issues finding retribution during the LA riots spawned by the Rodney King verdict.

I finished this collection in one sitting and would definitely recommend to book clubs because it offers a lot for discussion.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amistad for allowing me access to this book. Best of luck to
Chris Stuck with his literary career.

This book review will be posted on NetGalley, NCBC’s blog, and Goodreads.

I think it is hard to see whether the subsequent stories live up to the first only because the first left me on the floor, completely dazzled and in the presence of really literature altering level of talent. That story!! Published in Meridian initially. The stories pack so much power, wisdom, humor and truth they have to be consumed in more than one sitting. But the first story alone earns this collection all the accolades I am convinced it will get.