Give My Love to the Savages: Darkly Funny Debut Tales on Black Masculinity, Race, and Interracial Love

by Chris Stuck

“A harrowing portrait of race relations in America, as beautiful as it is urgent.” —Entertainment Weekly “Black satire with bite, like Zora Neale Hurston used to do, with a smile and a sharp elbow. A touch of Paul Beatty, a dose of Dolemite, and a serving of Dorothy Parker, too.  Give My Love to the Savages  announces Chris Stuck as a fearless talent, a debut that'll make your sides and your heart hurt.”—Victor LaValle, author of  The Changeling “Give My Love To The Savages is a wildly inventive collection of provocative stories about navigating the minefield of black masculinity in America. Stuck’s fresh and fearless perspective overturns assumptions about race and identity to reveal complex layers of absurdity. At times merciless, always darkly funny, these are stories of unexpected communion, connection, and compassion.”—Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone Dead A provocative and raw debut collection of short fiction reminiscent of Junot Diaz’s  Drown. A Black man’s life, told in scenes—through every time he’s been called nigger. A Black son who visits his estranged white father in Los Angeles just as the ’92 riots begin. A Black Republican, coping with a skin disease that has turned him white, is forced to reconsider his life. A young Black man, fetishized by an older white woman he’s just met, is offered a strange and tempting proposal.  The nine tales in  Give My Love to the Savages  illuminate the multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience. Chris Stuck traverses the dividing lines, and attempts to create meaning from them in unique and unusual ways. Each story considers a marker of our current culture, from uprisings and sly and not-so-sly racism, to Black fetishization and conservatism, to the obstacles placed in front of Black masculinity and Black and interracial relationships by society and circumstance. Setting these stories across America, from Los Angeles, Phoenix and the Pacific Northwest, to New York and Washington, DC, to the suburbs and small Midwestern towns, Stuck uses place to expose the absurdity of race and the odd ways that Black people and white people converge and retreat, rub against and bump into one another. Ultimately,  Give My Love to the Savages  is the story of America. With biting humor and careful honesty, Stuck riffs on the dichotomy of love and barbarity—the yin and yang of racial experience—and the difficult and uncertain terrain Black Americans must navigate in pursuit of their desires.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Ebooks, Contemporary, Audiobook, African American, Race

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 2021

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection! Winners announced on 28 February 2022.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I seriously doubted that I'd get deeply enmeshed in this book because Race. Such a stupid, racist thought...and so untrue in the end. I feel vindicated in continuing to prosecute my ongoing battle against the ossification of my brain. Why, I even read another YA book recently and y'all *know* how much I don't like teenagers. Even gay ones.

But this collection, now, this is the stuff I think I'll find every time I try something fresh. I am so often disappointed...not always the author's fault...that, when I find writers like Author Stuck I'm a little wary. "Is this the only one? Can and/or will he do more, get even better?" I'm hoping he can, and will, because a writer who looks at the world from his oddball angle is a deep pleasure to read.

The blow-by-blow list is on my blog: tinyurl.com/d2mhutr

[Reggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Stuck is a bold writer who shows that every author has and deserves the right to surprise their readers.

More to come.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

Next level.

One of the best series of short stories I’ve read this year. Probably thee best.

Highlights include — all of it.. but for real my personal favourites were:

- How to Be a Dick in the Twenty-First Century
- And Then We Were the Norrisses
- Chuck & Tina Go on Vacation
- The Lives & Loves of Melvin J. Plump, Esq.

and of course the title story which was amazing.

You know Chris Stuck is reminding me of Walter Mosley. I love how he’s able to reflect the experiences, choices, realities, mistakes and the essence of the various circumstances of Black men and boys in the lives of these fictionalized characters.

Some of the stories were a trip! I’m thinking of Chuck and Tina Go on Vacation. The passages where Tina is smacking kids in the face and doing the most threw me for a loop. I don’t know why it was so vivid to me but it was! Also some of the the character names: Chuck Norris, Sterling Silver and Frosty Flake, BRUH!

The fact that I enjoy so much work by & about Black women, this lens and these stories were well appreciated.

Chris Stuck took me through a gamut of emotions and every page was appreciated!

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic debut from Chris Stuck. I couldn't put it down. Each story in this collection had something captivating in it. From the characters, the theme, the one liners...I was hooked. It opens with, Every Time They Call You Nigger, a story I truly enjoyed. Other standouts for me were, How To Be A Dick in the 21st Century, Chuck and Tina Go on Vacation, This Isn't Music, The Life and Loves of Melvin J. Plump, Esq. and Give My Love to the Savages. Yes, that is 6 of the 9 stories; that's not saying the other 3 were unbearable but these hit hard and blew my mind.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Portland writer Chris Stuck consistently dazzles throughout this collection of very funny, occasionally brutal, and stylistically varied short stories. My favorites were the Jordan Peele-esque "Lake No Negro" (featuring a narrator who finds himself the fetishized target of suburban swingers), the surprisingly endearing witness protection story "And Then We Were the Norisses," and the hilarious dialogue-driven barroom scenes in "This Isn't Music." Stuck's attention to odd details, even in the more ambitious conceptual stories (a man literally becomes a penis, a conservative black man with vitiligo goes on a cruise with a boatful of people with physical ailments) is never less than sharp and thoughtful and had me laughing out loud several times. A strong and risk-taking debut.

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually, when I listen to audiobooks, I feel a little bit sad that I don't have the ability to read everything in print. It often feels like I am missing out on the experience of the book. For whatever reason, the talent of Korey Jackson reading this book to me felt like I was experiencing it exactly as I was meant to. There is such a wide diversity of characters in this book and he was able to embody every one. Maybe part of it is because of my own racial/cultural lens- this book being performed within my head would not have the needed life experience to truly capture it. But, I have read plenty of books where that was not the case.

Anyway, the writing in this is phenomenal. Chris Stuck needs to get way more publishing deals. Would love to see what he could do with a full length novel as well. Anyone who can write the range of people the way he did here, every one of them believable and real, leads me to think he could write about anything.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories built on foundations of unbalanced karma, the self identifying itself and male douchebaggery where (oftentimes) the inner pessimistic optimist lets the outer optimistic pessimist’s joy really bum him out, only to then retaliate with focused blind passion. I was introduced to the term “get your poops in a group” in this collection, and that, in a nutshell, is the goal of it’s protagonists, though some poops do get lost here and there.

[Bobbieshiann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Olivia Law]

An INCREDIBLE short story collection. Favourites were: Chuck and Tina Go On Vacation, How to Be a Dick in the Twenty-First Century, and The Life and Loves of Melvin J. Plump, Esq

[Nicole Korczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Underwhelming.

[LiteraryMarie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title...timely. The cover art...perfect. The stories within...just okay. Give My Love to the Savages is a collection of fiction stories centered around a Black man's life. Not just any Black man though. It is told in scenes of every time he's been called the N-word. Some are odd and absurd; others are very realistic. Yet each captured the Black experience in different phases and classes of life.

Happy Belated Pub Day, Chris Stuck! Give My Love to the Savages is now available.

~LiteraryMarie

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite is probably the first one. Many of the stories left me feeling more confused. It wasn't until I finished the entire collection that I appreciated the overall messaging.

[Christopher Louderback · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imaginative, inventive writing that turns the short story upside down. At times hilariously surreal, gut-punchingly dizzying, and immensely tender, this collection-threaded by themes of racism, masculinity, youth, identity, family, and grief—swam around in my mind, and found home in my dreams. Truly unlike anything I’ve ever read, and one of those books that demands not just to be read, but to be explored.

[Matthieu Cornillon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the first story in the collection, and would rated it 4-5 stars on its own. In the first couple of pieces, I noticed that the author had a knack for taking stories to interesting places in general, but specifically in moments that revealed moving moments of humanity. Throughout the collection, this was what I most appreciated: the interesting ideas, characters, and situations that Stuck created. I wish, though, that Stuck had gone farther. I often think of art, writing, music, etc. as the result of careful distillation: the maple syrup you get only after hours and hours of reduction. I found myself wishing Stuck had continued in the distillation, zooming in on moments that he had created, perhaps choosing to cover less ground. There is a tension here: the fun of the stories that wanders to exciting new places would be abbreviated by the reduction (unless spread to a much longer work). Still, I found myself wanting him to go there and disappointed when the stories just moved on.

I also found myself wishing for greater variation in the voice of the characters. Despite a wide variety of backgrounds, they all seemed to express themselves with a perspective on the world that was similar. I wished for sharper distinctions between them. In fairness to the author: I listened to this as an audiobook, and I think the actor's reading exacerbated this. Had he read it a little more flatly, without some of the interpretation he used, I think that differences written into the voices of the characters might have emerged more. And in fairness to the actor: it wasn't a bad read! It's just that the manner of expression across characters was similar. I wouldn't expect an audiobook to be a stage/film production, so it's not a problem that the actor didn't create whole different characters and voices for each. However, putting a little of the same slant on many of the characters may have had a homogenizing effect.

I am very curious to hear what Stuck creates next.

[Jamie]

Stuck’s characters don’t care what you think and move through the world with self-righteousness. I yelled at this book, angry at many of the choices of characters who acted from their own traumas. I kept reading though. It’s so damn readable. I keep reading because there was something fascinating about the layering of toxic masculinity with which these characters consider race and sexism, the audacity they have to express themselves in ways that embodied not giving a fuck. And what’s true is that Stuck writes characters that have nothing to lose. As the closing story shows us, he writes the kind of characters looking for a fight, (physically and metaphorically), perhaps both from a place of navigating their masculinity and from wanting to just be acknowledged.

Of this collection, the opening and closing stories held the most resonance for me, both fronted by biracial men balancing self-definition against the way the world perceives them.

Overall, while I struggled with many aspects of this collection, I respect the directness with which Stuck looks at stereotypes and society’s pressures on men.

[Stephanie A-M · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a ride. This is my latest journey into short story reading and it did not disappoint. While not every story resonated with me most of the entries had a familiar tone. My favorites were the last two stories, the final one sharing the of the entire anthology Give My Love to the Savages. If you are looking for a range of experiences on Black manhood, coming of age and identity you will enjoy this collection.

[Christina M · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting

I didn't love this book of short stories but I found them intriguing. Admittedly, being neither Black nor a man may have limited my ability to connect. I found the stories well-written and well-paced, an objective many short story authors struggle to achieve. Some had blatant symbolism while others were more subtle and the message was conveyed later in the story. For my personal enjoyment, I'd give this 3 stars but for the quality of work, I give it 4.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is plenty of serious, hard-hitting content here, but it's often tempered by clever humor and a loose, engaging style that makes each story fly by. "The Lives and Loves of Melvin J. Plump, ESQ." is the real masterpiece here, but every tale is memorable. I can't wait to read more from this exciting writer.

[Nella ☾ of Bookland · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I enjoyed how Stuck used dark humor to explore the themes of blackness and manhood in this collection. The standouts for me were "Every Time They Call You N*****" and "How to Be a Dick in the Twenty-First Century". I feel like the other stories were just okay.

[Whitney Dahlberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard with story collections- some of the stories were definitely worthy of 5 stars but overall I would give this a 3.5

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Anna B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more.

[Wayde Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

All these stories are brilliant. And the story "Lake No Negro" should be a movie.

[Phyllis | Mocha Drop · Rating 4 out of 5]

The heart of these stories center on an expansive male gaze which on the surface appear to be random glimpses of fictional experiences (sometimes karmic in nature) -- there are views from a myriad of multi-ethnic Black men of varying ages, education, political affiliations, and socio-economic backgrounds. However nothing is random - there is purpose and structure in this collection and when taken as a whole, it offers a dose of judiciousness and encourages reflection based on the relatability (or familiarity) factor within each story.

For example, in the first story, the narrator recalls specific moments of his life when he is called the n-word and reflects on how he handled the situation as a child and how his thoughts, actions, and attitude about the word has changed/evolved throughout his life. In Lake No Negro, a man relocates to the Pacific Northwest to escape a bad relationship and finds himself contemplating his integrity and moral center when propositioned with a lucrative offer steeped in racially-based sexual stereotypes and social taboos. The title story contains complex issues surrounding a privileged bi-racial man with unresolved past issues finding retribution during the LA riots spawned by the Rodney King verdict.

I finished this collection in one sitting and would definitely recommend to book clubs because it offers a lot for discussion.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amistad for allowing me access to this book. Best of luck to
Chris Stuck with his literary career.

This book review will be posted on NetGalley, NCBC’s blog, and Goodreads.

[Dinah Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

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Give My Love to the Savages is a quirky and entertaining collection of stories.

These stories take place all of the US from DC to Los Angeles and are so unique and this collection is unlike anything I’ve ever read.

The opening story tells of a biracial man’s life through all different occasions that he was called the n word.
Then you have a story about a man who is fetishized by a couple of swingers, a story about a child in witness protection, a story where a man literally becomes a penis, and a story about a Black republican with vitiligo who goes on a cruise for people with physical ailments .

Told from a male gaze this is a bold debutcollection about race, masculinity, fetishization, stereotypes, and the way the world perceives Black men. The dialogue in some of these stories is so funny. They’re all risky and witty and I love that karma often makes an appearance .

And can I just add a comment about the characters names: Frosty Flake , Chuck Norris , Richard Dickerson and Sterling Silver all perfectly fitting for their respective stories.

Shoutout to @booksarepopculture for putting this book on my radar and for hosting an author chat with Chris Stuck.
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#givemylovetothesavages #stories #shortstories #chrisstuck #amistad #amistadbooks #2booksunder50reviews #readwithbapc #bapc #booksarepopculture #bookstagram #diversespines #melanatedmarch #readdiversebooks #readmore #readmorebooks

[Plus Size Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine you're a bi-racial black man and your white dad takes you to his business located in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots and tells you that he needs you to watch his business.
He pushes you out of his car, a white Porsche that is gaining attention of looters, throws you a gun, and tells you that his life is more valuable than his

This was one of many stories in this book, I am still shook.

Other stand out stories include the black republican with vitiligo, the self-proclaimed asshole, the man that turned into a dick (a real one with arms) and the teen in witness protection.

Not one story in this collection was weak. I was so impressed with this read and need others to read it so we can talk about all the emotional, messy, fucked up feelings both the characters and readers journey through.

[Karen Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Stuck does a number of things I really like in this volume. He plays with names. He varies the tone from one story to the next, sometimes even within a story. And boy, does he ever stick the endings.
The stories focus on Black or biracial men, yet there’s a lot of diversity. Some are successful, some have lost, or are losing, that success, and some haven’t quite gotten there yet. Ages range from teens to middle age; a few stories are second person; one reads like a memoir. Not all of these men seem like good guys at first, but they’re all struggling to figure it out, and that generates a great deal of empathy.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Steve Portigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nicely varied collection of stories: all deal with some aspect of the contemporary Black male American experience, but the emotional tone, the fantasticalness, the humor all vary pretty dramatically from story to story. It makes for an enjoyable series of surprises, as you finish one story you have no idea where things are going to go in the subsequent entry. For me, as a white man, these stories about (to a greater or lesser degree) about being Black, were thought-provoking, insightful and illuminating.

[Ro Leapheart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuck creates a world full of Black men learning what it truly means to be Black in America. All face their own respective plights, but somehow there is some peace of hope that they all come across.
The vignettes explore modern black masculinity, in humorous and heartbreaking ways. The book dares us to consider about the Black men we know and love, and really think about how the world is affecting them.

Overall, Stucks fantastic writing made the world better. Specifically, I loved (1) the reflection of Give My Love to the Savages and (2) irony in This Isn’t Music.

[Page Passion · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic short story collention! The majority of these stories are full of melancholy and longing, but they also made me laugh out loud. It's rare for me to find books funny, so I appreciate it when authors are witty. This would be a great gift for a Black man in your life. There are many explorations of Black and Biracial identity in America as well as masculinity.

I think each story in this book is fantastic. I think my favorites have to be "Lake No Negro", "Give My Love to the Savages," and "And Then We Were the Norrises."