Witness: Stories

Written by Jamel Brinkley

Narrated by Karen Chilton and Korey Jackson

What does it mean to really see the world around you—to bear witness? And what does it cost us, both to see and not to see?

In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to
connect with, stand up for, care for, and remember one another, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape their futures as well as the legacies and prospects of their communities and their city.

In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, and the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes
show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon.

With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890591746

Jamel Brinkley

Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, among others. The title story from Witness was chosen by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner and the story ‘Comfort’ was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. He was raised in the Bronx and Brooklyn and teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.