“A remarkable examination of the human condition.” — William J. Mann, author of Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand
#KissTheScars
The eclectic stories in this collection are bound by the threads of desire in its many forms, above all, the desire for love and a place of safety in world where being Black and gay can thwart the fulfillment of that longing. The characters are complex, driven, difficult, and even, at times, unsympathetic, but always compelling.
A proud Black woman who escaped her rural, impoverished town returns after the collapse of her marriage and faces the scorn of those she left behind. A middle-aged gay man finds his loneliness temporarily relieved by the arrival of a stray cat. An unhappily married woman becomes enmeshed in her bisexual husband’s attempt to create a ménage à trois with a much younger man. A 16-year-old boy discovers the power of his sexuality when he embarks upon a dangerous seduction. Two Black men, one mature and rich, the other young and struggling, are drawn into a contentious affair by their shared love of opera. The legendary blues singer Glady Bentley crashes up against the barriers of race and gender when she gets caught up in a police raid.
Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck is a masterful collection of original stories by a gifted writer just beginning to hit his stride. It was named a 2022 Silver Medalist by the Independent Publisher Book Awards.
More Accolades for #KissTheScars
Lambda Award Finalist Larry Benjamin, author of The Sun, The Earth & The Moon and In His Eyes
“Joe Okonkwo presents a world of hurt—the walking wounded dragging themselves through the wreckage they themselves sometimes created. His voice, a steady hand on the back of your neck, forces you to look at his deeply flawed characters. You can dislike them, you can judge them, but you cannot turn away, so compelling is his examination of his characters’ emotional truths. To read this collection of stories is like taking a master class in writing literary fiction.”
Tim Murphy, author of Christodora and Correspondents
“Vivid, taut, slyly funny, bitchy, steamy, kinky, painful, melancholy, tender—all those words and more describe the stories contained here. Okonkwo fluidly moves between eras, points of view and narrative voices to spin a collection of tales that capture people—Black and white, gay straight and ambiguous, bougie and low-down—at their best and worst, striving for sex, status and true love. Whether the conflicts are mothers and sons, bisexual love triangles or schoolmates turned lovers, the characters in Okonkwo’s stories pinball against one another in surprising ways, many of them reuniting once more in the final title story, a moving and complex crescendo.”
Rahul Mehta, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of No Other World and Quarantine
“Joe Okonkwo does deep character work. Centering Black voices, queer voices, and femme voices, Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck presents unforgettable characters in stories that are equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious, and, at times, achingly sexy. In this far-ranging collection—moving from Prohibition-era jazz clubs to the Reagan ‘80s to present-day hook-up app culture, swinging from child narrators to single mothers, and including several thrillingly-linked stories—Okonkwo explores what it means to be human in all its glorious messiness. His characters throb with desire, fumbling to love and feel loved in the only ways they know how. In Okonkwo’s stories, there are no easy answers, no black-and-white, only, as one of his characters notes, ‘oases of gray.’ Musical references abound. Makes sense, as one of the great pleasures of reading Okonkwo’s work is the sounds of his sentences, the poetry of his language. I finished this book feeling richer, wiser, and more grateful to be alive.”
Excerpts from #KissTheScars
“Nina was drawn to the physique’s austere featurelessness, uncorrupted by fat or injury, unembellished by weights and workout supplements. Boyish and dewy. Spare. It projected a certain purity. Like a minimalist design, it possessed not one bit more than was necessary, and not one bit less.” — from “Gift Shop”
“I closed my eyes and just soaked up the music. Soaked in the music. Dunked myself in that shit. Fuckin’ drowned in it. Moon and sun and stars in my ears. A gold mine in my ears. Pearls, diamonds. Sparks. Shadows. Rage. Rainbows. Velvet. Hurricanes.” — from “Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck”
“His arms fly out wide and I fly into them and he encloses me in a fat hug. Hugs me so tight, it hurts. I ease into the pain, like I did behind the bleachers with Drake. Barrett is warm from the hot day. A little sweaty. When he releases me, I’m moist all over.” — from “Paulie”
“Out front, the clarinetist spun out reedy notes that squeaked high and rumbled low; that scampered up the scale before shuffling back down; that widened in volume, then winnowed to a whisper, the kind of whisper Gladys made as she stroked the silk and spoke in Sweetness’s pale white ear, and Gladys knew the girl was quivering, that she was breathing fast, that she was hearing that whisper like a roar.” — from “You Can’t Do That to Gladys Bentley!”