Böcker av Sikivu Hutchinson

What happens when hitchhikers conspire to find a missing black box? Surfers wipe out in a parallel Jim Crow universe? An L.A. courier travels to white suburbia for an alternative fuel source? A coffee shop Noah loads up her ark with humans? An infant apparition speaks its truth from a busted skateboard?A court martialed soldier confronts his demons? And two drifters misremember their shared past? In this eleven-story speculative fiction collection incorporating elements of sci fi and horror, author Sikivu Hutchinson explores the enigma of time, death, sleep, road trips, and betrayal on the liminal highways of the mind.

It's the late 1970s, and ex-Pentecostal Black female electric guitarist Rory Tharpe navigates the cutthroat world of corporate rock, dive bars, dusk-to-dawn recording sessions, and shady contracts as she travels the nation in a dilapidated tour bus with her bickering, boozing all-male band. Much-imitated and little-credited, Rory is in a late career tailspin when she goes on tour with international superstar Jude Justis, a white woman blues-rock singer who has built a turbulent mega-platinum career out of stealing from Black musicians. Broke and frustrated by the racism, sexism, and ageism of the rock boys' club, Rory warily joins forces with Jude. She then takes a detour through the painful past she shares with childhood nemesis Divinity Mason Mulvaney, a maverick pastor at the helm of the mega church enterprise Revivals, Inc. A homage to pioneering guitarist Rosetta Tharpe, Rock 'n' Roll Heretic is a bracing look at the power politics, heartbreak, and hypocrisy confronting a queer Black woman visionary at the intersection of music and commerce, faith and heresy, in a segregated music industry that eats its Black artists.