P.C. Verrone’s debut novel, Rabbit, Fox, Tar, is a fable-like story about a mysterious young Black woman whose arrival in a tightly knit neighborhood threatens to unravel its foundations. When Baby appears in Original Hill and begins a romance with the ambitious Lucius “Lucky” Foote, her presence upends a contentious city council race and intensifies long-simmering tensions over a Black neighborhood destroyed decades earlier to make way for a highway. As Baby becomes entangled in the lives of the community’s residents and begins questioning her origins, the novel explores race, power, belonging, memory, and the stories communities tell about themselves.
Verrone’s work has appeared in FIYAH, PodCastle, Nightmare, and numerous anthologies. He has been a Tin House Resident, a Playwrights’ Center Fellow, and a WNDB Black Creatives Revisions Workshop winner.
We asked Verrone to answer our recurring My Reading Life so readers could get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
The Magic Tree House series were the first books that I remember being absolutely ravenous for. I would check one out from the school library, bring it home, and then come running back the next day to get another one. Christmas in Camelot was the first book I remember looking forward to its release, and I was so thrilled to hold the hardcover in my hands after reading all those library paperbacks. That series ended up informing a lot of my interests to this day: history, puzzles, and a bit of magic.
What book helped you through puberty?
I’m not sure if it “helped,” exactly, but I was strangely attached to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Something about the opaqueness, the drama, and the coping with mortality spoke to me at that age. I felt like my entire world had become as absurd and surreal as the Bundrens’. When Vardaman said, “My mother is a fish,” I don’t know… I felt that! To be clear, my mother is not currently, and has never been, a fish.
What book do you wish 18-year-old you had read?
If The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta had existed when I was eighteen, I think it would have meant a lot to me. I was really into novels-in-verse thanks to Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, which I discovered around that time and remains one of my all-time favorite books. Atta’s story about a queer, mixed Black kid written in that beautiful poetry would have been an absolute hit! When my mom gave me a copy of it in my mid-twenties, I felt an immediate connection to that younger me who was so hungry to be seen.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
Whenever I build a syllabus, it’s mostly an excuse to make students read books I love, so with that in mind… Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, There, There by Tommy Orange, and Ours by Phillip B. Williams.
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
I was reading through all of Toni Morrison’s novels when I started this book, so her entire oeuvre is a guiding light for Rabbit, Fox, Tar. If I had to choose a single work of hers, it would have to be Beloved (as soon as you open the book, I think you’ll see why). Both Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi and Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova were extremely influential in figuring out the tone and voice of the book (shoutout to Akil Kumarasamy for introducing me to both authors). Not a book per se, but Sylvia Wynter’s essay “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation — An
Argument” informed the ideas that are really at the heart of the book: the interlocking of race, history, (in)humanness, and liberation.
What books are on your nightstand now?
I am making my way through all of Helen Oyeyemi’s novels, and I am currently on Peaces. Also, Portia Elan’s beautiful debut Homebound. Also, How to Assemble a Nightstand for Dummies.