Homebodies: A Novel

by Tembe Denton-Hurst Narrated by Marcella Cox

Overview

""[A] sharp, charming and passionate debut."" -New York Times Book Review

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Elle, USA Today, Bustle, Ebony, Harper's Bazaar, PopSugar, New York Post,*The Skimm, and The Millions.

A Best Book of 2023 by Marie Claire, Esquire, Vogue, them, Autostraddle, Betches, Gay Times, and Cosmopolitan.

An insightful, propulsive, and deeply sexy debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and pens a searing manifesto about racism in the industry.

Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter, but, for now, her days are filled with listicles about lip gloss and click-bait articles about celebrity haircare. Still, the job is flashy and her girlfriend is steady and supportive.*The path may be long, but Mickey's well on her way, and it's far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Everything finally seems to be falling into place-until she finds out she's being replaced.

Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism she's endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, even from her usually-encouraging girlfriend, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is, she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run: her hometown.

Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her hometown-and the flirtation of a former flame-but she soon learns that you can't outrun your past. In the newfound quiet, she is forced to reflect on the sacrifices she'd made for an industry that never loved her back and pick up the pieces of the life she thought she'd left behind for good. After all, when the walls of success you've carefully built around yourself come crumbling down, what-and who-are you left with?

A meditation on identity, self-worth and the toll of corporate racism, Homebodies is a portrait of modern Black womanhood with a protagonist you won't soon forget.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2023 - AudioFile

Marcella Cox narrates this striking debut with hushed intensity. Mickey is a Black beauty writer whose sudden layoff sends her spiraling into despair. Demoralized and exhausted by the racism she has experienced in the cutthroat world of fashion writing in New York and struggling to hold on to her self-worth, she abruptly leaves her girlfriend and heads home to suburban Maryland, where she reconnects with an old flame. Cox does a great job capturing Mickey's conflicting emotions. She smoothly incorporates dozens of text messages into her performance and delivers zingy one-liners and emotional monologues with equal skill. This is a sharp, funny, brutally honest novel about being young, going home, and figuring out what really matters. L.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/06/2023

Denton-Hurst debuts with an exciting chronicle of a Black journalist finding her voice. Mickey Hayward, a writer for a magazine called Wave, is disappointed by her supervisor’s casual racism and dismissiveness toward her ideas. Still, she believes she’ll find success, until she discovers that Wave is interviewing candidates to replace her, and she’s laid off shortly after someone is hired. Angry and reeling from being let go and a fight with her long-term girlfriend, Mickey posts a letter online describing her mistreatment at Wave, then returns to her Maryland hometown where she reconnects with ex-lover Tee and strives to be honest with her family about her struggles. Things are especially fraught with her father, with whom she’s built a fragile relationship after he started a new family following his divorce from Mickey’s mom. But her visit is cut short when an industry-wide reckoning with the exploitation of Black employees thrusts Mickey’s letter turned manifesto into the spotlight, and with it, Mickey herself. Denton-Hurst dazzles with her stirring indictment of racism in media and its insidious effects on Mickey, who must choose between making herself smaller to appease others and championing her own voice and experiences. Emotionally and politically resonant, this is not to be missed. (May)

From the Publisher

I couldn’t put it down.”  — Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Carrie Soto Is Back

"I saw so much of myself in Homebodies, and in Mickey’s utterly delicious and sometimes aching story. Mickey made me look back and love my young Black woman self, and I loved her so much for returning me to that place.”  — Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois

“Homebodies is a modern marvel—Tembe Denton-Hurst’s prose is both intimate and hysterical, inflammatory and elegiac. You’ll root for Mickey as she takes on the world, questioning and searching its contours, weaving a story we can’t help but find our own worlds inside of. Denton-Hurst has written a warm, brilliant novel that’s stunning and poignant; Homebodies is wonderfully witty and full of empathy and entirely original.” — Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot

“Homebodies is a beautiful story on becoming. Denton-Hurst’s prose is perfect with an innate attention to detail and astonishing ability to capture the shapes and colors of emotions as she brilliantly illuminates the growing pains of forging one’s own path…something which so many of us are still looking to do. This is a deeply felt, assured literary debut by a writer worth watching.”  — Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of award-winning novels Here Comes the Sun and Patsy

“Homebodies is a sharp and tender exploration of what it takes to make a place for yourself in a world that has not. Denton-Hurst deftly navigates the line between a knowing despair and an openhearted hope, contrasting the challenges Mickey faces from employers, lovers, and relatives who can’t always see or name her value with the strength she draws from learning to see herself and the love that has always been available to her. A captivating and illuminating debut.” — Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

"This novel just gets it right. Maybe it’s vivid storytelling or the intersectional approach to queerness, but this novel speaks to queer people of color who often feel isolated, stretched between two communities. Tembe Denton-Hurst balances a critique on white feminism through the lenses of a young, unapologetically Black, queer writer who’s searching for her identity outside the bounds of her career, family, and long-term relationship." — Cosmopolitan

“Denton-Hurst dazzles with her stirring indictment of racism in media and its insidious effects on Mickey. . . . Emotionally and politically resonant, this is not to be missed.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Sharp and heartfelt and keenly observed—I devoured this book.” — Katie Cotugno, New York Times Bestselling author of Birds of California

"Tembe Denton-Hurst's debut novel astutely captures what it's like to fight for yourself in a world that's stacked against you." — Harper's Bazaar

"In her debut novel, Tembe Denton-Hurst crafts an instantly memorable portrait of a queer, Black twenty-something figuring out how to use her voice in an industry where identity is prized, but only as far as it toes the company line." — them

“In her sharp, charming and passionate debut, 'Homebodies,' Tembe Denton-Hurst showcases an eye for the details that matter. . . . It is this eye for the rhythms and textures of life — of millennial digital media, of the death by a thousand cuts offered by workplace racism, of Maryland suburbia — that makes this novel vivid and inviting.” — New York Times Book Review

“Anyone drifting or unsure of themselves, pick up a copy of Homebodies immediately. . . . Part skewering of media, part literary fiction, and part romance, Homebodies has something for everyone.” — Betches

"Excellent . . . we devoured it.”  — The Skimm

"Homebodies is crackling with wit and compulsively readable, but it’s also an in-depth examination of the crushing reality that many workers in so-called 'dream jobs' . . . are ultimately expendable to the institutions they devote themselves to." — Vogue

“[A] searing coming-of-age story. . . . Consider it one of the year’s must-reads.” — Porter 

"While stories about young women working in the high-pressure media industry have always fascinated, few are told from the perspective of Homebodies. . . . Denton-Hurst deftly crafts a story of ambition, identity and love." — W Magazine

“Denton-Hurst's poignant and captivating debut is on its way to becoming one of summer's ‘it’ books.” — Scary Mommy

"Tembe Denton-Hurst’s masterful command of the narrative—classical in its shape, contemporary in its textures—makes this sparkling story shine all the more." — Esquire

APRIL 2023 - AudioFile

Marcella Cox narrates this striking debut with hushed intensity. Mickey is a Black beauty writer whose sudden layoff sends her spiraling into despair. Demoralized and exhausted by the racism she has experienced in the cutthroat world of fashion writing in New York and struggling to hold on to her self-worth, she abruptly leaves her girlfriend and heads home to suburban Maryland, where she reconnects with an old flame. Cox does a great job capturing Mickey's conflicting emotions. She smoothly incorporates dozens of text messages into her performance and delivers zingy one-liners and emotional monologues with equal skill. This is a sharp, funny, brutally honest novel about being young, going home, and figuring out what really matters. L.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2023-03-14
A young Black woman contends with New York media culture.

Mickey Hayward’s shiny writing job is not as great as she’d hoped it would be. “Instead of reporting on the goings on of Black life,” Denton-Hurst writes in her engaging debut, Mickey “was making listicles about the best lipsticks for every skin tone.” But when she’s abruptly fired from her position, Mickey is devastated and thrown into a depression that forces her to reconsider every aspect of her life—including her relationship with her girlfriend, Lex. For a break, Mickey takes off for her Maryland hometown, where she reconnects with old friends and tries to decide what to do with herself next. Full of contradictions, Mickey makes for an interesting protagonist—but very few of the other characters seem fully formed. Denton-Hurst’s descriptions of the publishing landscape are witty, as when she observes, “Every editor, writer, and intern believed they had a New York media memoir brewing just beneath the surface,” or when Mickey agonizes over a casual text message to her editor: “ ‘Of course!’ she wrote back, wondering if one exclamation point was enough.” But when Mickey heads for Maryland, the book starts to drag. Denton-Hurst has the novice writer’s habit of overwriting: Every action is engulfed by unnecessary description. For example, “Mickey toed off her sneakers before continuing inside, peeling off her coat and hanging her keys on the small hook in the entry.” The verbiage slows down the action and distracts from Denton-Hurst’s otherwise astute observations about media culture, race, and the experience of a young woman trying to make her way in the world.

An intriguing but imperfect debut.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175963466
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,096,771

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