Délana R. a. Dameron

A searching, atmospheric novel that celebrates Southern cowboy culture and the Black people who have always been a part of it, from the acclaimed author of Redwood Court, a Reese's Book Club Pick A sprawling landscape of sand, red clay, and pine trees, Fairfield County is the only place the Bolton family has ever called home. For over a century, they have cultivated this land, expertly raising horses to compete in derbies and rodeos and passing this knowledge on to the next generation. Dwayne, never quite the cowboy his grandfather envisioned, is the reluctant inheritor of the Bolton legacy. When tragedy strikes and he's orphaned by a barn fire that kills everyone he loves, the pain of this history is almost too much to bear. He maintains the family farm and raises his daughter nearby, but the land is a shell of what it once was, now devoid of the animals that once made the Bolton name legendary. Nikki, unlike her father, is a burgeoning cowgirl and natural rodeo prodigy with no knowledge of her family history. But through a series of events that threaten to sever father and daughter from the only land they've ever known, Dwayne is forced to confront his past so that Nikki can step into her future. Fairfield County is at once a breathtaking coming-of-age story, an expansive portrait of a Black Southern family, and a bold reclamation of one of America's most enduring cultural images.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A 'nuanced, brilliant' (Essence) debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s. 'A triumph of a debut, Redwood Court is storytelling at its best: tender, vivid, and richly complicated' - Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, a cul-de-sac in an all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, she learns important lessons from those who raise her. With visceral clarity and powerful prose, award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen.

A breathtaking debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family, seen through the eyes of its youngest daughter as she comes of age in the 1990s. "A beautiful exploration of a family . . . deeply moving." Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful "Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write 'em in your books and show everyone who we are." So begins award-winning poet D Lana R. A. Dameron's debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who, in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette, and can't wait to taste real independence; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they've built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall. With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

In this new collection of poems, Weary Kingdom, DéLana R. A. Dameron maps a journey across emotional, spiritual, and geographic lines, from the familiarity of the honeysuckle South to a new world, or a new kingdom—Harlem. Her poems traverse the streets of this Black mecca with a careful eye cast toward the intimacies of the exterior. Still, as the poems move throughout the built environment, they navigate matters of death, love, love loss, and family against the backdrop of a city that has yet to become home. Indeed what looms over this weary kingdom is a longing for the certainties of a lover’s touch, the summer’s sun, and the comforts of a promised land up North. And as the poet longs, so do readers. Ultimately they grow aware of Utopia’s fragility.

This title presents poetic conversations with a God whose omnipotence brings both peace and uncertainty. DeLana R. A. Dameron searches for answers to spiritual quandaries in her first collection of poems, ""How God Ends Us"", selected by Elizabeth Alexander as the fourth annual winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize. Dameron's poetry forms a lyrical conversation with an ominous and omnipotent deity, one who controls all matters of the living earth, including death and destruction. The poet's acknowledgement of the breadth of this power under divine jurisdiction moves her by turns to anger, grief, celebration, and even joy. From personal to collective to imagined histories, Dameron's poems explore essential, perennial questions emblemized by natural disasters, family struggles, racism, and the experiences of travel abroad. Though she reaches for conclusions that cannot be unveiled, her investigations exhibit the creative act of poetry as a source of consolation and resolution.