In his debut novel "Southern Cross the Dog," Bill Cheng writes in rich detail about a young black man's escape from the 1927 floodwaters in Issaquena County, Mississippi, to a brothel in the town of Bruce east of the Delta, where his path crosses that of a combination voodoo practitioner and piano blues master.
When he left behind the "twisting mule paths" of Crookhand Farm, the character Robert Lee Chatham missed "the grove of tupelos, and the heady perfume that, in the summer, would wash out from its depths." In Bruce, when he goes to do laundry for a prostitute, Robert could hear the Skuna River "beyond the lawns of sweetgrass and reed beds, rilling over the rocks."
Cheng may be treated to such sounds and smells himself for the first time next week.
The 29-year-old author, the son of Chinese immigrants, grew up in Queens, N.Y., and now lives in Brooklyn. On his book tour for "Southern Cross the Dog," he'll be visiting Mississippi, as well as Tennessee and Georgia, for the first time.
"It's a sensitive issue, it can be for some people, having someone from the Northeast appropriate something that I do not have a specific claim to," Cheng said by telephone from Brooklyn. "I would not want the work to be offensive to anyone, or provocative. But I can't not write the book that I want to write."
Prominent among the writers who endorse "Southern Cross the Dog" (Ecco, $25.99) on the book cover is Edward P. Jones, whose story collections center on African-American characters in Washington, D.C., and whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Known World" is about a black planter and slaveholder in pre-Civil War Virginia. "Cheng has carved out his own creative and accomplished path," Jones writes.
In a feature about Cheng's decision to write a Southern novel without seeing the South, The New York Times sought an expert's opinion on the success of the venture. Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss. - described as a "revered authority on Southern literature" - is quoted saying he was "suspicious" of the book before he read it, but, "I was won over."
When a character says, for instance, "I ain't got nobody in no Winona," it is Cheng's imagination, not his experience, at work in the language.
"I started with some blues music," says Cheng. "I wanted to write a book about the country blues and base it in Mississippi, with the sort of imagery and folklore of that place."
The book was the start of his master of fine arts thesis at Hunter College. "You start with a whisper, an image, a gesture, and sort of pull on that," he said of the story.
Cheng's love for the blues drew him to the epic Mississippi River flood and the era immediately following it. "John Lee Hooker and Charley Patton have very definitive songs about the 1927 flood," he said. In his acknowledgments, Cheng thanks the ghosts of 18 bluesmen, alphabetically, from Big Bill Broonzy and R.L. Burnside to Howlin' Wolf and Bukka White.
Bill Cheng, author of "Southern Cross the Dog," will visit Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., at 5 p.m. May 20. He'll appear at Square Books in Oxford, Miss., at 5 p.m. May 21. At 6:30 p.m. May 22, he'll be at Parnassus Books in Nashville before heading to the Decatur (Ga.) Arts Festival.
When he left behind the "twisting mule paths" of Crookhand Farm, the character Robert Lee Chatham missed "the grove of tupelos, and the heady perfume that, in the summer, would wash out from its depths." In Bruce, when he goes to do laundry for a prostitute, Robert could hear the Skuna River "beyond the lawns of sweetgrass and reed beds, rilling over the rocks."
Cheng may be treated to such sounds and smells himself for the first time next week.
The 29-year-old author, the son of Chinese immigrants, grew up in Queens, N.Y., and now lives in Brooklyn. On his book tour for "Southern Cross the Dog," he'll be visiting Mississippi, as well as Tennessee and Georgia, for the first time."It's a sensitive issue, it can be for some people, having someone from the Northeast appropriate something that I do not have a specific claim to," Cheng said by telephone from Brooklyn. "I would not want the work to be offensive to anyone, or provocative. But I can't not write the book that I want to write."
Prominent among the writers who endorse "Southern Cross the Dog" (Ecco, $25.99) on the book cover is Edward P. Jones, whose story collections center on African-American characters in Washington, D.C., and whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Known World" is about a black planter and slaveholder in pre-Civil War Virginia. "Cheng has carved out his own creative and accomplished path," Jones writes.
In a feature about Cheng's decision to write a Southern novel without seeing the South, The New York Times sought an expert's opinion on the success of the venture. Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss. - described as a "revered authority on Southern literature" - is quoted saying he was "suspicious" of the book before he read it, but, "I was won over."When a character says, for instance, "I ain't got nobody in no Winona," it is Cheng's imagination, not his experience, at work in the language.
"I started with some blues music," says Cheng. "I wanted to write a book about the country blues and base it in Mississippi, with the sort of imagery and folklore of that place."
The book was the start of his master of fine arts thesis at Hunter College. "You start with a whisper, an image, a gesture, and sort of pull on that," he said of the story.
Cheng's love for the blues drew him to the epic Mississippi River flood and the era immediately following it. "John Lee Hooker and Charley Patton have very definitive songs about the 1927 flood," he said. In his acknowledgments, Cheng thanks the ghosts of 18 bluesmen, alphabetically, from Big Bill Broonzy and R.L. Burnside to Howlin' Wolf and Bukka White.
Bill Cheng, author of "Southern Cross the Dog," will visit Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., at 5 p.m. May 20. He'll appear at Square Books in Oxford, Miss., at 5 p.m. May 21. At 6:30 p.m. May 22, he'll be at Parnassus Books in Nashville before heading to the Decatur (Ga.) Arts Festival.
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