An Autobiography of Skin

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A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • This magisterial, intimate look at Black womanhood “follows three women whose various traumas haunt them literally and metaphorically, as it explores what it means to be a Black woman in America today” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice).

A middle-aged woman feed slots at a secret back-room parlor. A new mother descends into a devastating postpartum depression, wracked with the fear that she is unable to protect her children. A daughter returns home to join the other women in her family waging spiritual combat with the ghosts of their past.

An Autobiography of Skin is a dazzling and masterful portrait of interconnected generations in the South from a singular new voice, offering a raw and tender view into the interior lives of Black women. It is at once a powerful look at how experiences are carried inside the body, inside the flesh and skin, and a joyous testament to how healing can be found within—in love, mercy, gratitude, and freedom.A New York Times Editor’s Choice
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
A Texas Observer Best Book of the Year
 
“[A] powerful debut.”
—The New Yorker

“In this love letter to women, Lakiesha Carr drops us into the lives of a multigenerational group of unforgettable women. . . . Part of the book’s pleasure is discovering how [they] are connected via three achingly poignant, interconnected stories, connections which are not at all typical, but unexpected and true-to-life.”
—Amerie’s Book Club, March 2023 Selection

“A multifaceted examination of life as a Black woman. . . . Subtle, leaving space for each character to process and reflect on their own lives. . . . full of both humor and sadness, but most importantly, possibility.”
—Shondaland

“Powerful. . . . [An Autobiography of Skin] follows three women whose various traumas haunt them literally and metaphorically, as it explores what it means to be a Black woman in America today.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“An Autobiography of Skin marks the arrival of a major literary talent. Carr is doing nothing less than excavating the ghosts of her ancestors and exploring the ways that they, and America’s racial past, continue to haunt. . . . This is a book of great psychological and emotional acuity.”
—Houston Chronicle

“Powerful and timely. . . . It is a testament to Carr’s power as a writer that she is able to so clearly represent these aspects of her characters’ experiences with such intimacy and honesty. In that sense, the book is an admission of the fact that, for all the changes that have occurred in our society over the past 100 years, many Black people, both men and women, are still processing the trauma and violence caused by their body’s simultaneous hypervisibility and erasure.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“I was stunned by Lakiesha Carr’s preciseness of memory; how she remembers things that most people do not—the ancient things, the careless things, the shameful things—because forgetting feels better. It’s courageous to give them voice; and not just any voice, but a singsongy one, like a blues or a gospel. So beautifully crafted, An Autobiography of Skin is a dangerous and needed magic, both frightening and joyful in its conjuring. 
—Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for National Book Award for Fiction

“Lakiesha Carr writes achingly . . . [A] distinguished debut—its bodily rhythms, its sensory evocativeness, its quality of attention to the human soul—perhaps what defines it most is its insistent drive toward honesty, toward the compelling truths that could only have been uncovered by the angled vision of this particular author.”
—Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man

“Full of aching desire and hard won wisdom, An Autobiography of Skin is a work of art. Carr’s pages contain the kinds of Black women we see but seldom hear. This book is nothing short of a love letter to the powerful women who comprise the heart of a community.”
—Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You

“With rich and rhythmic prose, Lakiesha Carr pulls us into the warm, wounded bodies of her unforgettable characters. Obstinate, yearning women make their way through a world that day after day asks too much of them. Still, they each guard something miraculous: hope, mostly intact. Carr writes with compassion, wicked humor, and a rare intuition that runs deep and true.”
—Chia-Chia Lin, author of The Unpassing

“Meditative and powerful in its love for the generations of Black women at its heart, An Autobiography of Skin dives body-and-soul into its characters’ experiences to explore questions about faith, forgiveness, and the fortitude that just living day to day can sometimes require. Lakiesha Carr unspools her stories with a patient fearlessness, venturing into unexpected places and unique perspectives to fully illuminate them.”
—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

“Lakiesha Carr writes elegantly about grief and passion, loss and redemption, though she is unafraid to twist the knife. Her characters endure monumental heartbreaks, both from their loved ones and a world that threatens all manner of violence yet demands sacrifice in return. These women face life’s inevitable disappointments, and while their choices may haunt us, they also remind us that romance somehow persists, as does the human spirit. A gorgeous debut from a talent to watch.”
—Laura Warrell, author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

“An immersive journey . . . this novel features women you’ll want to fight for—three generations whose very survival hinges on struggle not just with the men in their lives but the very flesh and skin they are living in.”
—Oprah Daily

“With gorgeous prose and subtly spectral vibes, Carr’s striking debut delves into generational trauma. . . . By tracing the characters’ complex bonds, Carr underscores the power of community and kinship among Black women who find a way to be vulnerable and joyful in a world that too often changes them with the role of caretakers. This exploration of love, courage, and desire is not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A deep plunge into the depths of violence, faith, and love. . . . With vivid writing and characters, Carr’s debut is . . . always passionate, never boring.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Emotions practically drip off the page . . . Carr’s writing is eloquent and engaging.”
—BooklistLAKIESHA CARR graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a Maytag Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction and a Jeff and Vicki Edwards Post-graduate Fellowship in Fiction. A journalist and writer from East Texas, she has held various editorial and production positions with CNN, The New York Times, and other media. Her writing has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the DC Commission on Arts & Humanities for nonfiction writing, and the Kimbilio Fellowship for fiction writing.Yesterday Was a Dream, Today Is a Miracle
 
The night, as most nights, was like a dream.
 
At 10:00 p.m., once I fed the dog the last of the scraps off the stove. Once I cursed the cat for scratching up my mama’s antique furniture, then welcomed him back into my arms. Once I slicked my hair back into a thin ponytail, wrapping it up tight in my mama’s old scarf. Once I stayed in the bathtub a lil too long, letting the heat of the water do things my husband stopped doing years ago. Once I oiled my body down and up and down again with cocoa butter, I reached for my housecoat hanging delicately against the door—leopard print and silk—wrapping it around my bloated body, not caring if the water or oil stained or bled through.
 
And as if a ghost, soundlessly, I floated to the garage and had a cigarette alone.
 
Mostly I listened to the blues. Lightnin’ Hopkins. Bessie Smith. Bobby Womack, if my mama was heavy on my mind which was most nights, but especially tonight. So I listened to the blues and nursed a lil Crown Royal poured thin over crushed ice. The kinda ice I used to crunch and eat out of nerves, and now just out of habit. I smoked my Virginia Slims, pulling that cool menthol taste to the back of my throat before pushing it out—a thick plume of smoke.
 
Creating that smoke is what I liked to do. A lazy sort of cloud that held in the air long enough for me to see the future, revisit the past, the everything at once found within that haze. I let my thoughts drift, curl and bend as the smoke did; full with memories before tapering out and disappearing. Or, as I guessed, becoming something else. Vapor. My daddy used to tell his congregation that life was like a vapor—here today and gone tomorrow—and so they best get right with the Lord soon. As I sat watching the smoke blossom like a flower from my lips, growing and weakening again; slowly giving away with each second, I couldn’t help thinking: There goes my life. I took another long pull, watched the ash stiffen then drop to the cold concrete floor and thought: There it goes again and again.
 
Sometimes I reached out for the smoke, tried to grab it and rein it in but like the life I was living, it always seemed just beyond my grasp.
 
If I became tipsy, I might sing. Not because I could or should but just because. A low hum. A gentle cry cause sometimes I only felt happy when listening to the blues. Until I changed the record player to something electronic. Something full of shock and wonder. The funk. That beat that lifted me up somewhere heavenly, then gently delivered me back to Earth. That’s what music did for me. It was an escape, the sweetest escape there ever was. Until I remembered my body, my senses, my reality called home. Where late nights in the garage seemed a sanctuary. A safe place where I could mourn the life that never was and make temporary peace with the present.
 
Tonight I did all of those things.
 
###
 
In my bedroom, I walked to my bath, the most beautiful space in my whole house. Decked out with zebra and lion prints; a jungle, the most feminine boudoir where I housed my relief. A long day’s exhale. A sigh of regret. There I stood before the mirror nude. There I watched the soft brown flaps of skin fold upon one another, creating stacks and stacks of endless flesh around the middle parts of my body. There I closely examined the fine lines and deep ridges carved like rivers into my face, where it told a story of longing for the unknowable. For the replacement of all that felt lost. Of everything life seemed to take from me, demand from me with the expectation of grace. My eyes were dull, gradually dimming with age. Like a fire whose amber coals glowed a deep burgundy in the dark until exhausted, then smothered to soot.
 
Needless to say, I was lonely. And my breasts showed the fact; their gentle dips against the top of my abdomen hung like plums gone soft under a hot summer sun. Ripe without appreciation, ignored to rot while gravity had its way. My thighs were thick like tree stumps, and that’s how I felt. Tall. Brown. Topped with a crown of hair gone thin, and thinner still, especially along its edges where in certain spots my scalp revealed smooth and soft bald spots. And yet I still felt desirable. Comforted with the warm burn of whiskey in my belly, my gaze took in the absoluteness of my womanhood and for a moment I still felt deserving of something good, someone who might love me. All of my hidden parts that somehow never made their way to the surface of my personality—day after day after day.
 
Sometimes in the quietness of the early morning hours, just before dawn, when the sky was a dark purplish blue, I felt hopeful. Optimistic. And then once my high began to come down, and the faint sounds of my husband’s snoring across the hall made their way into my own room, I was left with fatigue. And so it was then just as tonight that I went to bed; a mess of cheetah-spotted down comforters and black cotton sheets. I slipped under the covers, still nude, grateful for the coolness of the fabric against my skin. To feel at all something welcoming. And then I watched my stories: Young and the Restless, Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital, CSI, NCIS, and all of the other crime dramas where dead bodies the color of cold milk wound up in unusual places and cold white people with serious faces and grim speech sought to find the cause of their demise.
 
The hours passed. And just as the sun revealed itself in orderly fashion, and the sound of school buses running like steam trains rumbled through the neighborhood and the light bickering of children seeped through the thin windowpane of my bedroom, I pulled my body into myself. Pulled the covers over my head and shut my eyes tight, willing darkness and sleep to come until it finally obeyed.
 
This was my night. Not so unique. Not so special. But always consistent.US

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