Sonatas for the Dead (Stories)

Sonatas for the Dead is a tapestry of black life across time and continents.

A formerly enslaved woman remembers the sound of Confederate soldiers’ boots seven decades later. A blind savant learns to play eight thousand songs on the piano. A child wanders through hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods looking for precious metals in the ruins.

In JJ Amaworo Wilson’s stunning debut short story collection, Black life is presented as picaresque, wry, and miraculous. Struggle is leavened by humor, the laughter in the dark of those who know things might get worse before they get better. The cast of characters includes scrappers and soldiers, musicians and murderers, researchers and revolutionaries. They are steeped in both the wisdom of the ancestors and the wisdom of the street, as their lives get subsumed in the tides of history.

With his trademark lyrical prose and flights of surrealism, Amaworo Wilson gives us a treasure trove of Black experience, an unforgettable mosaic of grief and joy.