A Novel · Forthcoming from Avra Press
The Reflection That Love Left
Malik Carter’s father spent a lifetime building a fortress of silence against a world that left Black men no safe place for softness. When he dies, it comes crumbling down. It will take Malik years to fully understand what it held, and what it cost.
The truth, no longer hidden behind the wall of silence, left Malik suspended between selves, belonging fully to neither the face in the mirror nor the prestigious institutions where he modulates his voice, monitors his volume, and calculates every gesture. Since boyhood he has run the arithmetic of being seen as acceptable, and it has made him what his father was: credentialed, accomplished, a stranger in his own reflection.
The cruelest theft is not what a life of conformity takes from the body but what it persuades the mind to surrender willingly, one concession at a time, for the safety of being tolerated.
What saves him is not arrival. It is something that those who came before left for him, never named, never spoken aloud—and the question of what he will leave behind.
The Reflection That Love Left is forthcoming from Avra Press. Formats, retailers and the publication date will be announced here.
Details
- Publisher
- Avra Press
- Publication
- To be announced
- Genre
- Literary fiction
- Formats
- To be announced
An excerpt · Chapter One
The House That Seemed Perfect
Sunday afternoon. Malik Carter, the youngest of four, is home from church with his parents, James and Tanya.
After church, the house softened. Ties came loose, sleeves rolled up, and the arguments over TV shows resumed at regular intervals. Sunday dinner started just past two: leftover chicken from last week’s potluck, macaroni and cheese, a tray of Tanya’s famous collard greens reheated from frozen. The older kids picked at their plates, distracted by texts and the promise of the mall, but Malik ate two helpings and still eyed the cornbread, watching for a pause in the conversation where he might ask for more.
When the meal ended, the living room returned to its true function: a sorting ground for minor battles and temporary alliances. Keisha took the remote and declared a 90-minute lock on the TV for her reality show. Terrence paced the hall, trying to finish an assignment he’d forgotten, muttering equations under his breath.
Malik drifted to the corner, where the GameBoy sat charging on the window ledge. It was an old model, half the screen dark from a drop the previous year, but it worked if you angled it just so. He’d been waiting all morning to play—Terrence had a standing rule that no one touched it before him, but church days were supposed to be exceptions. Malik reached for it, fingers closing around the plastic, just as Terrence rounded the corner.
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The publication date will be announced here and by Avra Press. Booksellers, librarians and reviewers can write to hello@avrapress.com.
The publisher
Avra Press is an independent literary publisher for voices that have too often been written about instead of heard.
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