Stateway's Garden

“Through slyly poetic language and an absolute grasp on place and description, Drain has added to the canon of Chicago literature. He belongs on the shelf next to Algren, Brooks, Dybek, and Wright—writers who know and love this city in all its magnificent contradictions, its unique, ugly beauty.”—Chicago Reader

“The only fireworks in Jasmon Drain’s subtly rendered, beautiful debut are the ones his young characters watch explode in the distance from the public housing project they live in. These are patient, profoundly compassionate stories about the small shocks and flickers of transcendence in ordinary Chicagoans’ lives. Told in hauntingly spare prose reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s, Drain’s stories take a moment to sink in. Once they do, they don’t leave you.”—Sam Graham-Felsen, author of Green

“These interconnected stories bring us close to an area rarely represented in our literature and art: the project housing of Chicago. It captures the pain, cruelty, and moments of magic that can only come from living in poverty in America. Jasmon Drain’s fierce eye projects images and characters that will stay with you long after putting the book down. A devastating knockout of a debut.”—Fernando A. Flores, author of Tears of the Trufflepig

“About Chicago, Jasmon Drain knows a thing or two. He writes about a housing project so grim that those who move in dream of leaving. Stateway Gardens as a community is long gone, destroyed by gentrification. But the residents and their buoyant dreams are documented, celebrated, honored. I bow to this writer in gratitude.”—Sandra Cisneros

“Characters seek soft shelter in these powerfully felt, interconnected stories. . . . Capturing an intricate portrait of Stateway Gardens (a real place that was razed in 2007), Drain mines the idea that life in the projects could be both a thing to escape and something to nurture, a matter made more critical by the ticking clock of gentrification. . . . A deep, vibrant collection.”—Booklist

“This bold outing vividly encapsulates a chapter of Chicago’s complex history.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Jasmon] Drain writes with fierce warmth about characters coping with crushing racism and poverty in this impressive debut.”—Kirkus Reviews