By Meghana Mysore
FROM: Scoundrel Time

“We have to tell the stories of folks who have no stages and no film to capture them,” says one of the characters in Natashia Deón’s The Perishing.

Deón’s novel moves between the past and future, following the story of Lou, a young Black woman who is transported to 1930s Los Angeles to discover truths about her lineage. The novel illuminates the ways in which we are connected to our histories, that behind every door lies a past self, glimmering with potential.

From the years 1930 and 2102, Déon’s characters Sarah and Lou witness the devastating horrors of the world and the reverberations of slavery to modern-day capitalism. They also witness the intricacies of grief and love. In the wake of a death, Sarah muses, “My kind of grief is continual because grief is the form love takes when someone dies.” Deón’s work allows for a multifaceted portrait of humanity, a symphony of emotions both vivid and complex. A deep sense of mourning runs through the novel as characters ask what it means to grieve a future once imagined for themselves and others.

Author of the critically-acclaimed novel Grace, Deón is an NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney, and college professor at UCLA and Antioch University. Grace was named a Best Debut Fiction by The American Library Associations, Black Caucus and was named Best Book by The New York Times. A PEN America Fellow, she has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Prague’s Creative Writing Program in the Czech Republic, Dickinson House in Belgium and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. As a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, Deón founded REDEEMED, a criminal record clearing and clemency project that pairs writers with those who have been convicted of crimes.

Of Deón’s writing, critic Jennifer Senior writes in The New York Times, “Her emotional range spans several octaves…She writes with her nerves, generating terrific suspense.” Of The Perishing, author Jamie Ford says, “It’s a lush, genre-smashing, philosophical experience of a novel that blew my mind even as it broke my heart.” Read Rest of Interview Here