Sean Enfield

“At Hope, we were capable of cruelty, of pettiness and bullying,” Joe Bond writes in Hope House, his debut novel, “but also we believed it when Watts told us that our lives were in each other’s hands.” True to this insight, Bond’s noveldoes not fixate on the worst of its characters’ transgressions but rather on what they can now make of themselves and of each other — given home, given hope. Hope House paints a beautiful, humane portrait of masculinity that is as tender as it is profane.

. Dec. 2023. 174p. ISBN 9781952897337. pap. $16. ED COPY ISBN Middle-school teacher Enfield’s debut book is the Black analogue to Tracy Kidder’s 1989 Among Schoolchildren, only here the school is in Texas and the students are Brown, Black and Muslim. Enfield’s essays—some previously published—are like his students: at times scatological, at other times erudite and reflective. He deftly demonstrates his pedagogy, informed by both rap and classical literature. The writing is deft and nimble.

Sean Enfield delves into the great American condition: burnout. Threading his experiences both as a Texan student and later as a first-year teacher of predominately Muslim students at a Texas middle school, Holy American Burnout! weaves personal essay and cultural critique into the historical fabric of Black and bi-racial identity.