808s & Otherworlds

September's Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature --Lambda Literary
Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021 --Paperback Paris

An elegant mash of memoir, poetry, tales of appropriation, thoughts on Black masculinity, Hulk, Kanye. --Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

808s & Otherworlds announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.