All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere
Stories
by DeMisty D. Bellinger
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Pub Date Sep 01 2024 | Archive Date Aug 31 2024
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Description
Fantastical, sensual, and as beguilingly strange as they are insightful and real, the stories of All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are centered around intimate familial or romantic relationships, featuring protagonists who make awesome discoveries—from the beautiful to the horrible—in seemingly mundane situations. The protagonists in each story come from marginalized communities, which sometimes exacerbates their problems but always allows for unique perspectives and epiphanies.
A violinist nearly hits a bicyclist with her car on her rush to rehearsal, leading to a blissful affair and speculation about the effect of love on her violin playing. The whispering of schoolgirls leads a teacher to consider her own fears and failings. In the title story the nature of motherhood, fatherhood, and familial pride plays against a backdrop of death and high school theater.
These are stories of human frailty and newfound strengths, with surprising confrontations. The writing is rich and playful, whether the characters are coy or startlingly direct, creating worlds in which the metaphorical might become literal in the blink of an eye. DeMisty D. Bellinger finds magic in the smallest moments and makes the biggest moments resonate with a quiet intensity.
Advance Praise
“In All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere DeMisty D. Bellinger has gifted us a book of many worlds beneath the same roof, its stories and characters at turns brash, tender, joyous, sly, and always deeply, messily human. I loved dwelling in these pages. I loved the ride this collection took me on: one full of surprises and heart.”—emily m. danforth, author of Plain Bad Heroines and The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“DeMisty Bellinger’s new collection is full of surprising connections, complex questions, and wonderfully human perspectives on relationships and networks of kinship. I wanted to both race through it and savor every moment.”—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers: A Novel
“The stories in All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are a lesson in creative risk-taking. With this bold collection of genre-bending tales, Bellinger invites us to dismantle binaries around sexuality and gender, grief and comfort, desire and repulsion, damnation and redemption in ways that challenge and champion the messy mystery that is the human heart.”—Sheree L. Greer, author of Once and Future Lovers: Tenth Anniversary Edition
“Infectious reading. All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere is a feast of storytelling where women—mothers, daughters, and lovers—travel the roads between a world that wishes to constrain them and the ferocious realm of their own desires.”—Elwin Cotman, author of Weird Black Girls
“These stories are hot. Inventive, fierce, simmering with erotic energy and the sheer beautiful unexpectedness of women asking for more and better.”—Miciah Bay Gault, author of Goodnight Stranger
“Open this book to any page—you can’t lose. All Daughters are Awesome Everywhere is indeed awesome on every page. These meticulously detailed stories earned both my admiration and love. Great reading experience.”—Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781496241306 |
| PRICE | $21.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 164 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
LeeAnn C, Librarian
Interconnected disconnected short story vignettes, ethereal yet darkly grounded, weave throughout this short long book.
I'm reminded of the first time I read Kafka's "Metamorphosis" ... and The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope, or River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta.
It's not so much a linear story that happens. It's the fog and the light in the darkness that appears and disappears without warning.
The author calls it Black girl magic, and it's woven through every page of the book.
Somehow, a bit of story- Wisconsin maybe - about a violin called Vivien stays in my head.
And Samana? That little pocket of academia was a masterpiece.
What a whirlwind of a book. The kind you should probably put down. Not read in one sitting. But you will anyway.
Expect magic and ghosts and trauma and hope and magic. Especially magic.
Mary O, Reviewer
I love short story collections in general, but this one was something truly special. Each story presents a unique and meaningful struggle, and each is written with such beautiful expression that my heart breaks every time.
It took me some time to read through the entirety of this book, not because I didn't enjoy the stories, but because every story hit me hard enough that I needed to set them down for a bit! Bellinger has a real talent for reaching deep into a reader's heart to find the most tender and vulnerable threads to pluck. I highly recommend this to all.
Heather F, Bookseller
This is an exquisite short story collection with a wide focus and razor-sharp commentary. I think it's better to savor these stories 1-2 at a time, rather than read the collection in one setting, but it will stick with you for a long time.
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