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Award-Winning Author Tiphanie Yanique, "Monster in the Middle" in conversation with Felix Jean-Louis (UCI History)
by Illuminations: The Chancellor's Arts & Culture Initiative
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Vibrant and emotionally riveting, MONSTER IN THE MIDDLE moves across decades, from the continental U.S. to the Virgin Islands to Ghana and back again, to show how one couple's romance is intrinsically influenced by the family lore and love stories that preceded their own pairing. What challenges and traumas must this new couple inherit, what hopes and ambitions will keep them moving forward? Exploring desire and identity, religion and class, passion and obligation, the novel posits that in order to answer the question "Who are we meant to be with?" we must first understand who we are and how we came to be.
Yanique says "This novel touches on some of the most poignant historical moments, bringing us to this apex moment in the present, where we're still searching for love while struggling to reconcile political and cultural differences. This book asks us to rethink what it means to be an American during turbulent times, particularly an American in love."
Beautiful, heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking, MONSTER IN THE MIDDLE is a story that tells an honest journey of love. It portrays relationships as they are—sexy, messy, and everything in between— and shows us how our time, place, and position in the world impacts how we experience love and intimacy. Told in spellbinding prose, this multigenerational novel challenges everything we know about relationships and makes us wonder why we love the way we do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the award-winning novel Land of Love and Drowning, as well as the poetry collection Wife. Winner of the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel award, and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Award and a Fulbright scholarship. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker and anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2020. Originally from the Virgin Islands, she now lives in Atlanta, where she is a professor at Emory University.
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