num_pages: 240
description: A collection of raucous stories that offer a panoramic view of New Orleans from the author of the stunning and audacious (NPR) debut novel We Cast a Shadow.Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.In Beg Borrow Steal a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after just coming home from prison; in Ghetto University a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in Before I Let You Go a woman who's been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in Fast Hands Fast Feet an Army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in Mercury Forges a flash fiction piece among several in the collection a group of men hurriedly make their way to a home where an elderly gentleman lives trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.These stories are intimate invitations to hear witness and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal and undeniably New Orleanian.
language: English
title: The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You: Stories
publisher: One World