Jesusdevil: The Parables

Writing in a style she calls ''afiction,'' Alexis De Veaux expands and moves beyond traditional narrative, following the adventures of Fhill, a black, queer spirit who has taken human form. Neither male nor female, Fhill moves fluidly and disruptively across concepts of identity, passing through the nine ''parables'' that comprise this text. Examining aspects of what it means to be black and human - from a nonhuman perspective - Fhill''s liminal nature redefines social and literary categories, exploring social constructions of blackness as well as themes of desire, memory, sex, revenge, and more. A daring new work and crowning achievement from a veteran storyteller. Cover art by Sokari Ekine, photographer and visual artist. ''Alexisa said that what she was currently writing was called afiction, something that was coming through her that was not built as a linear story of generated characters, but as a revealed poetics of gathered and ever-changing spirit... As she sent me the JesusDevil parables she had written to that point, I read them immediately and asked for more. I felt like I had won a literary lottery for my soul. What I got to read, what you are about to read, is a text that I believe will take its place in Black feminist classic creative literature alongside Toni Cade Bambara''s The Salt Eaters, Ntozake Shange''s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide...When the Rainbow is Enuf, with the spirit mystery of Toni Morrison''s Beloved. And - it is unlike any of these, or anything else I''ve ever read.'' - adrienne maree brown, from the foreword.