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In several stories, race and gender are shown to be largely performative.

The relationships that matter here – those that define Brinkley’s characters, as often as not by their absence – are predominantly paternal and fraternal. Indeed, it’s the question of what it takes to be a man – an American man of colour, specifically – that provides the book’s theme, and though women flit through its pages in various roles, they occupy another realm entirely. They aren’t all men, either for every fedora-doffing dandy and greying has-been there’s a lost boy or an adolescent whose desire feels a lot like fury. Precarious, haunted, wise too long after the event – all seem more apt descriptions as they share their magnetic tales of abandonment and flight, and of wild nights that demand to be followed to their dawn-streaked ends. T he “lucky” men in Jamel Brinkley’s mighty debut short story collection do not initially appear blessed.