Milk Blood Heat, Dantiel W. Moniz
Milk Blood Heat, Dantiel W. Moniz
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Milk Blood Heat
Stories

Author: Dantiel W. Moniz

Narrator: Machelle Williams

Unabridged: 5 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/02/2021


Synopsis

A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another.

A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family's church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father's ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.

About Dantiel W. Moniz

Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. She lives in Northeast Florida.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane on April 20, 2021

I loved these stories and the many interesting people at the center of them. Moniz writes with incredible sharpness and precision, and there is an ache in so many of these stories. They all end without much resolution but it works. There is a real confidence in a writer saying, this is as much of th......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on April 02, 2021

A visceral short story collection that focuses on the interior lives and interpersonal relationships of Black girls and women. My favorite stories in this collection, “Tongues” and “The Hearts of Our Enemies,” combined raw writing with developed character arcs. “Tongues” explores an older sister’s e......more

Goodreads review by luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) on August 27, 2021

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 3 ½ stars “She was of that special age where she knew both nothing and everything, and no matter where or at whom she looked, she saw her own reflecting glimmering back like a skim of oil. She could be anyone, still.” Milk Blood Heat is a promising debut, one that I'm......more

Goodreads review by David on August 04, 2021

There were some interesting things going on in this collection. Each of the stories is set in Florida and foregrounds female characters, but the stories are otherwise unrelated. Dantiel Moniz is definitely a writer to watch.......more

Goodreads review by marta the book slayer on November 23, 2021

3.8/5 The more I reflect on the short stories I read, the more I realize the lasting impact they had. For example, I was posed with a question as to whether a person's actions determine who they are to someone. In one of the short stories a woman goes on a road trip with her brother to spread the ash......more