Politics and Prose
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Joseph Earl Thomas — God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer - with Reggie Bailey
Posted
June 19, 2024
Views
852
Likes
16
Engagement
1.88%
June 19, 2024
852
16
1.88%
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58:29Now PlayingWatch author Joseph Earl Thomas' book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
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After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.
Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a powerful examination of every day black life--of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He's writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories, Leviathan Beach, among other oddities.
Thomas is in conversation with Reggie Bailey, the Co-Founder, Executive Producer & Co-host of Books Are Pop Culture. The creator of 10 Books 10 Decades—The Biggest Book Challenge. He is a literary citizen who believes that books should occupy the same space in our cultural lexicon as film, television, music, video games & fashion.
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Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.
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