All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere
Stories
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Nebraska Press
Published:1st Sep '24
Should be back in stock very soon
Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction
Fantastical, sensual, and as beguilingly strange as they are insightful and real, the stories of All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are centered around intimate familial or romantic relationships, featuring protagonists who make awesome discoveries—from the beautiful to the horrible—in seemingly mundane situations. The protagonists in each story come from marginalized communities, which sometimes exacerbates their problems but always allows for unique perspectives and epiphanies.
A violinist nearly hits a bicyclist with her car on her rush to rehearsal, leading to a blissful affair and speculation about the effect of love on her violin playing. The whispering of schoolgirls leads a teacher to consider her own fears and failings. In the title story the nature of motherhood, fatherhood, and familial pride plays against a backdrop of death and high school theater.
These are stories of human frailty and newfound strengths, with surprising confrontations. The writing is rich and playful, whether the characters are coy or startlingly direct, creating worlds in which the metaphorical might become literal in the blink of an eye. DeMisty D. Bellinger finds magic in the smallest moments and makes the biggest moments resonate with a quiet intensity.
"Bellinger's prose is honest and unflinching. A thoughtful, observant collection of short stories from an important voice."—Kirkus Reviews
"This is an intimate collection that illuminates how the mundane moments of life can become more significant than we realize, and sometimes even catastrophic. Compelling and relatable."—Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature
"All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere adds to the cannon of literature on what it means to be female, but also on what it means to be truly seen by another."—Lara Lillibridge, MER Journal
“In All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere DeMisty D. Bellinger has gifted us a book of many worlds beneath the same roof, its stories and characters at turns brash, tender, joyous, sly, and always deeply, messily human. I loved dwelling in these pages. I loved the ride this collection took me on: one full of surprises and heart.”—emily m. danforth, author of Plain Bad Heroines and The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“DeMisty Bellinger’s new collection is full of surprising connections, complex questions, and wonderfully human perspectives on relationships and networks of kinship. I wanted to both race through it and savor every moment.”—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers: A Novel
“The stories in All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are a lesson in creative risk-taking. With this bold collection of genre-bending tales, Bellinger invites us to dismantle binaries around sexuality and gender, grief and comfort, desire and repulsion, damnation and redemption in ways that challenge and champion the messy mystery that is the human heart.”—Sheree L. Greer, author of Once and Future Lovers: Tenth Anniversary Edition
“Infectious reading. All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere is a feast of storytelling where women—mothers, daughters, and lovers—travel the roads between a world that wishes to constrain them and the ferocious realm of their own desires.”—Elwin Cotman, author of Weird Black Girls
“These stories are hot. Inventive, fierce, simmering with erotic energy and the sheer beautiful unexpectedness of women asking for more and better.”—Miciah Bay Gault, author of Goodnight Stranger
“Open this book to any page—you can’t lose. All Daughters are Awesome Everywhere is indeed awesome on every page. These meticulously detailed stories earned both my admiration and love. Great reading experience.”—Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You
ISBN: 9781496241306
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
188 pages