New People

By: Danzy Senna

Narrated by: Kristen Ariza

From the best-selling author of Caucasia, a subversive and engrossing novel of race, class, and manners in contemporary America.

As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre. They've even landed a starring role in a documentary about "new people" like them, who are blurring the old boundaries as a brave new era dawns. Everything Maria knows she should want lies before her - yet she can't stop daydreaming about another man, a poet she barely knows. As fantasy escalates to fixation, it dredges up secrets from the past and threatens to unravel not only Maria's perfect new life but her very persona.

Heartbreaking and darkly comic, New People is a bold and unfettered novel that challenges our every assumption about how we define one another and ourselves.

©2017 Danzy Senna (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Senna's fearless novel is equal parts beguiling and disturbing...Senna combines the clued-in status details you'd find in a New York magazine article with the narrative invention of big-league fiction.... Every detail and subplot...is resonant. A great book about race and a great book all around." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"The third novel by an author who's been weaving indelible portraits of race and class in America for nearly two decades could not have arrived at a more apt time, as we find ourselves in the aftermath of a real-world presidential election immersed in identity politics.... The stakes of Senna's latest triumph are both personal and global and will provide a powerful and necessary echo of our current cultural climate." ( Harper's Bazaar)

"You'll gulp Senna's novel in a single sitting - but then mull over it for days." ( Entertainment Weekly)

Just ok

Heard the author interviewed about "New People" on NPR last week & immediately purchased the book. I agreed with the Scott Simon, the interviewer, the "ending was lacking". The story was suspenseful in some areas but didn't go anywhere. It was a strange story that JUST ENDED.

What?

It took me a longer than usual to listen to this audiobook. I had to replay chapters because I hard time getting into it.

Unique protaganist and story

Book Review
I have read a lot of reviews for this book, both “professional” like the very favorable Kirkus Review, and from Audible listeners (mostly disappointed ones), but no one seems to like this book for the reason I did, which is that it is utterly original. In a reading universe of exhaustively similar plots and even voices, Maria is her own woman. A very complex human character, closer to real than I suspect most people find comfortable. In fact, even in the novel, no one is really comfortable with her except poor love-blind Khalil. Maria does some highly unusual things, yet still manages to keep up her facade. Until she falls asleep and it cracks. This is how mental breakdowns so often actually happen, not with a bang, but a whimper. A final letting go of the rope tethering our outer persona to our inner reality. Maria is a rebel searching for a cause that she doesn't find in her dissertation. The poet is a way to channel some of that unfocused search for meaning. And a way to escape the pressure of a marriage she clearly doesn't want, but can't find a good enough reason to call off. I didn't really like Maria, but I found her tremendously real and I had empathy for her. I also found her interesting. What would I do if someone mistook me for the nanny and then fled the apartment before I could explain? Not sure, but I enjoyed being asked the question by this novel.

Wait what???

Decent book, disappointing ending 😩... I'd read the next one though-- there seems to be a looming series about to take place!

The voice actor was excellent.

None of the characters had the depth or humanity to be likable or relatable, and it was hard to see a point to the story itself. just as futile an enterprise as Jamestown was, I suppose.

Different!!

I did not get the point of the story. I am still trying to figure out who are the new people. Are the new people mix races and their thoughts?
The ending leaves the story open for discussion.

Most interesting perspective!

This audio book has such emotionally engaging writing--very interesting up-to-the-minute perspective on our culture. Maria embodies how much life and identities have shifted in her lifetime, really good story too.

Too weird and strange; too many unanswered questio

I love Danzy Senna's writing and have read many of her books, but this one was just too weird and strange for me. And what will actually happen to Maria? So much is just left hanging. I do teach college level AFAM and am always looking for new things to teach, and there was much I valued in this book but overall I just found it unsatisfying and so have not selected it for my class next year.

I just kept hoping for it to get better

Weak. Story wasn't great and neither was the eventual wrap up. Left me sad in didn't trust my gut in the early chapters which I restarted twice because I thought I was just distracted.

book club book

No one in our book club enjoyed this book. Was it about race or mental illness?