Synopsis "Long Division"
From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a &;funny, astute, searching&; (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi. Written in a voice that&;s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it&;s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen &;City&; Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he&;s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book&;s main characters is also named City Coldson&;but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City&;s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother&;s house, where he discovers the key to Baize&;s disappearance. Brilliantly &;skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism&; (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike &;smart, funny, and sharp&; (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history &;that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves&; (The Wall Street Journal).
