Long Division: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a "funny, astute, searching" (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.
City's two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother's house, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance. Brilliantly "skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism" (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike "smart, funny, and sharp" (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history "that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves" (The Wall Street Journal).
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Kiese Laymon. (2021). Long Division: A Novel. Scribner.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Kiese Laymon. 2021. Long Division: A Novel. Scribner.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Kiese Laymon, Long Division: A Novel. Scribner, 2021.
MLA Citation (style guide)Kiese Laymon. Long Division: A Novel. Scribner, 2021.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 0 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0439-1/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0439-1/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0439-1/AAF/14C/BE/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0439-1/AAF/14C/BE/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174835
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B08LDX4G47
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174835
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174828
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Kiese Laymon
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Long Division
- dateAdded
- 2021-05-28T05:52:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=5808044
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Long Division A Novel
- crossRefId
- 5808044
- subtitle
- A Novel
- id
- AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45
- starRating
- 2.9
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: LongDivision_9781982174835_5808044
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 3625958
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174835
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 6/1/2021
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aaf14cbe-e8e3-4d30-b3ef-b1913ab90e45&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: LongDivision_5808044
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B08LDX4G47
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 6/1/2021
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aaf14cbe-e8e3-4d30-b3ef-b1913ab90e45&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: LongDivision_9781982174835_5808044
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174835
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 6/1/2021
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aaf14cbe-e8e3-4d30-b3ef-b1913ab90e45&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: post c 1945
- value: Modern
- value: Contemporary
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Laymon, Kiese
- bioText: Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon is the Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi and author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He was recently named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.
- name: Kiese Laymon
- publishDate
- 2021-06-01T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Long Division
- fullDescription
- Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction
From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a "funny, astute, searching" (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.
City's two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother's house, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance. Brilliantly "skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism" (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike "smart, funny, and sharp" (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history "that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves" (The Wall Street Journal). - reviews
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
June 3, 2013
Two not-quite-parallel threads run through Laymon's meandering debut novel: the first, the story of young Mississippi high-schooler Citoyen, a.k.a. "City"; the second, chapters from a book he finds about a young Mississippi high-schooler of the same name, who, it seems, is him in a different time period. City is something of a typical inner-city teenage protagonistâsharp-witted and sharp-tongued, yet sensitive and observantâso his uncharacteristic outburst and the ensuing repercussions that give the novel its initial momentum seem implausible. The novel takes a fantastical turn, and occasionally Laymon's workings stand out a little too clearly. This selective adherence to the "rules" of writing happens on a larger scale: the novel within a novel goes unexplainedâand unquestioned by Cityâfor so long it's as though the author is ignoring his own subject matter to keep pages turning. Those trusting Laymon to provide answers will find a curious, enjoyable novel. However, readers who believe authors must address a text's pressing concerns as they make demands upon the readerânot when the author decides he wants toâwill find this novel more trying. Though its real-world sections take relish in skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism, the book's interest in fantasy elements serves as an easier, less interesting, way out.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
May 15, 2021
A revised version of Laymon's elliptical, time-folding work of metafiction about Southern racism. The first novel by Laymon, initially published in 2013, is effectively two novels, both potent yet often funny character studies. In one, it's 2013 and Citoyen, aka City, is a Mississippi high schooler vying to win a national title in the "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence" competition, a kind of spelling bee for syntax. City's onstage explosion (over the fraught, contentious word niggardly) goes viral, prompting him to escape to his grandmother's home, where he pores over Long Division, a novel that purports to explain the recent, much-discussed disappearance of Baize, a local Black girl. City's stint with his grandmother is marked by confrontations with racists and extreme payback against them as well as contemplations of racist language from the N-word on down. The novel's second part is Long Division itself, in which City is a teenager in 1985 who, with the help of his friend Shalaya, finds a portal in the woods that sends them forward to 2013, where Baize is an aspiring rapper, and back to 1964, where he's forced to confront the Ku Klux Klan. In style and structure, Laymon's novel is an inheritor to Black postmodern literature of the 1960s and '70s--Toni Morrison most famously but also Leon Forrest, Gayl Jones, and William Melvin Kelley. And like many pomo works, the plotting gets convoluted as City attempts to untangle the various threads of his personal history. But the struggle is part of the point. Laymon wants to position his complicated hero as part of a throughline of violence against Blacks across decades, from microaggressions to lynching. City proclaims that the Long Division he's reading is "about tomorrow and yesterday and the magic of love." That's also true, if obliquely, of the novel Laymon has written. A sui generis, sometimes woolly exploration of the complexity and long reach of racism.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
August 9, 2021
In this revised and improved edition of Laymon’s visionary debut novel (after the memoir Heavy), Blackness, language, and love frame a complex metafictional and time-traveling story about the legacy of racism. Fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson, from Jackson, Miss., is one of two Black students competing in a nationally televised grammar contest in 2013 (the other is named LaVander Peeler). When City finds out the contest is rigged, he goes on an on-camera rant and becomes Internet-famous overnight. In the aftermath, City’s parents send him to live with his grandmother, and he brings with him a book titled Long Division, which has no author credited. Laymon then plunges readers into the pages of City’s book, in which the protagonist, also named City, time travels from 1985 with a friend to 2013. There, they meet Baize Shephard, whose parents disappeared during Hurricane Katrina. The three teens then travel to 1964 to save City’s grandfather from the KKK. While the time shifts can be confusing, historical moments such as Katrina and Freedom Summer help give grounding, as does strong characterization. At times humorous (when City feels insecure around LaVander, he calls him “Lavender” or “Fade Don’t Fade”) and often tragic, this coming-of-age story makes clear the characters’ struggle for self-determination under systemic racism. It’s a challenging work, and worth the effort. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.
- popularity
- 940
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/aaf14cbe-e8e3-4d30-b3ef-b1913ab90e45/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- aaf14cbe-e8e3-4d30-b3ef-b1913ab90e45
- starRating
- 2.9
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0439-1/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0439-1/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0439-1/AAF/14C/BE/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0439-1/AAF/14C/BE/{AAF14CBE-E8E3-4D30-B3EF-B1913AB90E45}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: African American Fiction
- value: Literature
- value: Historical Fiction
- publishDateText
- 06/01/2021
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781982174828
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction
From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a "funny, astute, searching" (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also... - sortTitle
- Long Division A Novel
- crossRefId
- 5808044
- subtitle
- A Novel
- publisher
- Scribner
- bisacCodes
- code: FIC019000
- description: Fiction / Literary
- code: FIC043000
- description: Fiction / Coming of Age
- code: FIC049040
- description: Fiction / African American & Black / Historical
