Dominion - by Addie E Citchens (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A novel with a big cast, Dominion explores the lies and complicity of a Baptist church and the family that leads it-a philandering minister, a pill-popping first lady, and a favorite son whose fall will expose them all"--

Book Synopsis

In this taut Southern family drama, the sins of a favorite son rock a small Mississippi town.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy--no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he'd never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community. Told from the point of view of the women who love these two men, Dominion illustrates how we enable the everyday violence and casual sins of the patriarchy.

A Black Southern family drama that deals as much in tenderness and humor as it does in brutality, Addie E. Citchens's Dominion reveals the many sinister ways in which we are shaped by fear and patriarchy.

Review Quotes

"A wise, sophisticated, and impressively crafted novel of secrets, longing, and strength."
--Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness

"This is one hell of a novel. Dominion is about two women who see what they want to see, until they no longer can. The storytelling is layered and beautiful and ugly at the same time, and beneath the story there is the other story about small communities and secrets and powers and how feeling like you have to live up to unspoken expectations can destroy you and everyone around you from the inside out. It captures church community and the South and the gulf between the haves and have-nots with precision and keen observations. This novel will grab you in the gut and hold you there. It's absolutely outstanding. Once I entered this world I didn't want to leave."
--Roxane Gay, author of Opinions

"This is the rarest and finest kind of storytelling, where both the tradition and innovation get plucked by the most audacious artistry I've experienced in a long, long time. You read this and see there's literally nothing narratively Addie E. Citchens can't do with her skill, her will. We have never in our reading lives experienced such an imagination, a gumption, a breathing Mississippi, and a craftsperson this locked in at this stage of her career. My god, we are lucky."
--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"It's rare that a debut author produces a work of such tenderness and ferocity, but that's what Addie E. Citchens has done in her unforgettable Dominion. Rich with metaphor and thrumming power, it tells a vivid and unforgettable story of two Mississippi Black women. If Citchens didn't exist, the South would invent her. But she does exist and our common literary soil is enriched because of it."
--Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The American Daughters

"In Dominion, Addie E. Citchens teaches us how ceremony works. She shows us how much it matters whose voices take center stage, which questions we ask, and whose stories we avoid. And the costs of not listening to our own voices and the prophetic wisdom of Black women and girls. Somehow Citchens worked a horror and healing into the same tightly woven work of brilliance. I laughed and cried with and even prayed over these characters. I could not stop turning the pages. And the ceremony worked. Nothing is the same now. Addie E. Citchens is a world-changing writer."
--Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

"I loved this brilliant novel. Dominion is a must-read. Addie E. Citchens tackles misogyny with urgency, humor, authenticity, and unflinching honesty. Citchens has crafted an unforgettable work of art that exalts the beauty and strength of Black womanhood against the backdrop of the patriarchy. Thought-provoking and entertaining, this incandescent novel will stay with readers."
--Annell López, author of I'll Give You a Reason

"Mississippi is a mystifying language. In Dominion, Addie E. Citchens speaks it with a dazzling tongue. The book is at once ancestral and newborn, drunk with sugary grits beauty and sobering with a Black woman's truth. Citchens shows us that, in a world roamed by two-legged beasts whose robes are stitched with the blood and ruin of willful women, getting happy and getting free are vast contradictions."
--Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

"Looka here, Dominion is the Black-ass book we needed--from the collective storytelling to the language to the big love we have for one another. Addie E. Citchens tells stories like my aunts and uncles playing spades, toggling unexpectedly between subtlety and explosiveness, with a side of good ol' shit-talking and a deep knowing."
--Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat

About the Author

Addie E. Citchens was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and lives in New Orleans. A graduate of Jackson State University, she studied in the Florida State University Creative Writing Program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Oxford American's "Best of the South," Midnight & Indigo's speculative fiction anthology, and other publications. Her blues history work features prominently in Mississippi Folklife, and she has been heard on the Arts Hour on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. She was the inaugural recipient of the FSG Writer's Fellowship. Dominion is her first novel.