Summer Reading List: Welcome to Braggsville

Book Cover: William Morrow, 2015

The UC Berkeley Summer Reading List is an annual compilation of recommended (though not required) readings suggested by Cal faculty, staff, and students as a welcome to incoming freshmen and transfer students.

This week we take a closer look at

Welcome to Braggsville

T. Geronimo Johnson

New York: William Morrow, 2015

“In this, his second novel, PEN/Faulkner finalist and former UC Berkeley instructor T. Geronimo Johnson follows Daron Davenport and his three friends and fellow Cal students as they travel to Daron’s hometown of Braggsville, Georgia to stage a protest over a local Civil War reenactment – a protest that goes wrong in devastating ways. Woven with Greek tragedy and thick with pop culture, at once a fiercely funny satire and a moving social commentary on how it’s never simple when we talk about race and class in Bezerkeley and across the country, Welcome to Braggsville is a startling and powerful tour de force.”

— Ryan Sloan, Lecturer, College Writing Programs

This post was contributed by

Michael Larkin

Lecturer, College Writing Programs

Tim Dilworth

First Year Coordinator, Library

Jonathan Garrett

Site designer, Doe & Moffitt Libraries