We Are a Haunting /// Tyriek White

“What a beautiful, haunting and hued narrative of American living. I’m in love with this story and the way Tyriek White breathes life into these characters.” —Jacqueline Woodson, MacArthur Fellow and author of Another Brooklyn

“This novel is so New York—so, so New York—yet so deeply southern on lower frequencies. It’s astonishing.” —Kiese Laymon, MacArthur Fellow and author of Long Division

A poignant debut for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Jamel Brinkley, We Are a Haunting follows three generations of a working class family and their inherited ghosts: a story of hope and transformation. 

In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.

In the present, an expulsion from school forces Colly across town where, feeling increasingly detached and disenchanted with the condition of his community, he begins to realize that he must, ultimately, be accountable to the place he is from. After college, having forged an understanding of friendship, kinship, community, and how to foster love in places where it seems impossible, Colly returns to East New York to work toward addressing structural neglect and the crumbling blocks of New York City public housing he was born to; discovering a collective path forward from the wreckages of the past. A supernatural family saga, a searing social critique, and a lyrical and potent account of displaced lives, We Are a Haunting unravels the threads connecting the past, present, and future, and depicts the palpable, breathing essence of the neglected corridors of a pulsing city with pathos and poise.

BIO

Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, where he served at-risk and marginalized youth, artists, and scholars in the classroom. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Lit, a literary foundation which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop and the New York State Writer's Institute, among other honors. He holds a degree in Creative Writing and Africana Studies from Pitzer College, and most recently earned an MFA from the University of Mississippi. 

REVIEWS

“We Are a Haunting is a beautiful and poetic journey through the rotting foundations, crumbling ceilings, and tucked away corners of a city. It’s also a moving, time-skipping portrait of a family from the ancestors to a doula-in-training to her latchkey son. It’s about how the past will always be with us whether it’s literal spirits or a ten-year-old public housing work order.” -- Matt Stowe, Greenlight Bookstore

“A super lyrical urban family story—such perfect NYC scenes and commentary—Tyriek sees with crystal clear vision and is able to bring the audience into his world.” -- Kira Wizner, Merritt Bookstore

“There is a sadness that haunts this well-written and poetic debut novel by Tyriek White. This is a narrative that grabs you, never lets go, and forces you to reckon with the saga of the family at the novel’s center.” -- Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose

“If you read the prologue to Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting, you’ll wonder if he can keep up the heart-aching beauty of his prose. Spoiler alert: he does. The book is haunting indeed, focused on a family gifted with the ability to hear from ghosts as they deal with the realness of life in New York City and beyond. This is a debut, so I’m excited to see what else Tyriek White will bring us in the future.” -- Diane Marie Brown, author of Black Candle Woman, in Zibby Mag

“[We Are a Haunting’s] wide-ranging, multivocal, quick-shifting style—which incorporates frequent allusions to literature and visual art, brand names and the neighborhood prestige attached to them, and a mixtape element—serves admirably to emphasize the book’s ambition, which is to capture and to celebrate not just these characters, this family, but the community and the city they emerge from, serve, and love. An intelligent, gritty, discursive group portrait of working-class New York from the 1980s to now.” -- Kirkus Reviews

[H]  Astra House  /  April 25, 2023

1.1" H x 9.1" L x 6.2" W (0.9 lbs) 272 pages