Kalisha Buckhanon's Blog - Posts Tagged "2019books"

Thank you for being here. Already the early interest, attention and praise for SPEAKING OF SUMMER is similar to UPSTATE- now 14 years old this year and with renewed discussions due to its National Book Foundation's 2018 Literature for Justice selection.

For those who were not picked to win one of 10 copies in January's SPEAKING OF SUMMER giveaway, enjoy a short excerpt of the novel in the meantime. Here, the main character Autumn Spencer tries to articulate the anguish of not knowing where her other half has gone.

Excerpt of Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon

I had left Summer’s fingerprints on her dressing mirror. I joyfully borrowed her clothes. If I breached her journals or notes or emails, I heard her voice saying her old words and I felt better. I washed her scent from her pillowcases, sheets, and comforter. I switched her bedding and moved in to her room, to feel she was still here. My bedroom, the smaller one facing the brick gangway, never invited the breeze. Now it was just my dressing closet, in need of a good sweeping and dusting. The comforter crumpled and twisted at the foot of my Ikea bed. I finally threw out a rank coffee cup with spoiled cream and a saucer of pizza crusts on the nightstand. One day, I stomped from Summer’s bed to smash down my digital alarm clock, automatically set to go at 7 a.m. I arose around noon now, later in rain.

Her absence clogged my head with memories of our life together, now separated. I just wanted to know she was okay, alive, because without that assurance my mind produced a steady carousel of conjecture. Each stop was dark, terrifying, and sad. I drifted from most so-called friends. None of them knew what to say. Sadly, I suspected some suspected me. I failed to return calls from back home, not that I received many. I felt betrayed, and guilty. I wanted to know what I had done, or what someone else did. I didn’t want to intrude on her new life, if she wanted to start over so fresh I was unwanted. We had, after all, estranged from our history and nearly our own mother, before the inevitable. Our last parent’s dying left us no choice but to repair the breaches. With our whole history and origins dwindled, it was possible one more lost person might not add up to much...

SPEAKING OF SUMMER is released from Counterpoint Press on July 30, 2019.

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