The Residue Years

by Jackson, Mitchell S.

• ISBN13: 9781620400289
• ISBN10: 1620400286
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-08-20
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary

The NEP (Northeast Portland) is not the Portland of Portlandia, farm-to-table restaurants, and indie beers. The NEP is Portland's ghetto, where an adolescent male in the 1990s is more likely to get the mandatory minimum than a high school diploma. And for young men, most opportunities have to do with fast-twitch muscles. It is this world, Mitchell Jackson's home, that this dynamic autobiographical novel portrays. Fresh out of a treatment program, Rhonda has three months to stay clean and to get her kids back. Her youngest two have been living with their father, across town and in another world. Champ, her eldest, has been holding it down in the neighborhood, trying to keep on track and in school, to do the right thing by his mother and little brothers, but the lure of the street and the need for money pull him into the ubiquitous drug trade of the NEP.As the three months that make up the novel's framework push on, as Rhonda looks for work, turns to God, does her level best to avoid the people and the haunts of her crack-smoking days, her son Champ dares to dream a solution: a house, and a united family under one roof. In a misguided effort to secure funds for a family home, he tumbles deeper and deeper into the rough trade of drug dealing.The tension and the conflict and the heartbreak in this novel are apparent. But there's also an intimacy and a reality here that plays against stereotype. There's compassion and humor, too. Told in a language that sings with the rhythms of the street, The Residue Yearsis about a world of few choices and little opportunity, of drug dealers and drug users, sometimes within the same family. And it's about family against all odds: a son's guarded love for his mother and a mother desperate for a second chance at love with her sons.

Author Biography

Mitchell Jackson was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He holds a Masters of Writing from Portland State and an MFA from New York University. Mitchell teaches writing at NYU, Medgar Evers College, and John Jay College. He also works as a journalist, writing about rap music for Vibe, The Source, and various others. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals, and he is a previous winner of the Hurston Wright Award for College Writers. He is also the author of the original e-book Oversoul: Stories and Essays. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.