"Your Face in Mine" reading at Words

All members of the community are invited to attend a reading and discussion on Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 7:30pm, at Words Bookstore in Maplewood, by Jess Row, a professor at The College of New Jersey. He will be reading from his fascinating new novel, “Your Face in Mine,” which raises complicated questions about race and identity, and has been getting excellent reviews (see below). The reading should be of great interest to our community and our ongoing discussion about race, identity and integration. An award-winning writer, Jess Row has delivered a poignant and provocative novel of identity, race and the search for belonging in the age of globalization. One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn’t recognize calls out to him. To Kelly’s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly’s closest friends in high school—and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: After years of immersing himself in black culture, he’s had a plastic surgeon perform “racial reassignment surgery”—altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since. Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his new identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Kelly, still recovering from the death of his wife and child and looking for a way to begin anew, agrees, and things quickly begin to spiral out of control. Inventive and thought-provoking, “Your Face in Mine” is a brilliant novel about cultural and racial alienation and the nature of belonging in a world where identity can be a stigma or a lucrative brand. A selection of recent reviews: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/books/jess-rows-your-face-in-mine-explores-racial-reassignment.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/books/review/your-face-in-mine-by-jess-row.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/books/jess-rows-your-face-in-mine-a-novel-about-changing-race.html Event details: Wednesday, Oct. 22, 7:30pm Words Bookstore 179 Maplewood Ave. Maplewood, NJ www.wordsbookstore.com Please join us to hear some excellent writing and to participant in a lively conversation about race and the commodification of identity. Thank you very much.