DOPPELGANGBANGER

Finalist, 2021 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry

Best Books of 2021, Boston Globe

Best books for Adults 2021, New York Public Library

Best Chicago Books of 2021, Chicago Reader

Favorite Poetry Collections of 2021, Electric Literature

With the wit and musicality fitting of a 90s baby raised during the golden age of hip-hop, Cortney Lamar Charleston grapples with the landscapes of Chicago’s South Side and suburbs as well as the tensions that impact a Black boy’s struggle through self-destructive definitions of manhood. While the language in these poems is playful, Charleston’s vulnerability invites readers to intimately witness the speaker’s journey from adopted persona to an authentic self that defies traditional molds.

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Advance Praise for Doppelgangbanger

Once again, Cortney Lamar Charleston has proven why he is one of the most profound, singular voices of a generation. He says, “I'm beside myself almost always: A-side, B-side,” and a door into the magic of lyric opens wide. In Doppelgangbanger, Charleston offers us a study in precision, in history—he takes us on a walk towards an understanding of our cultural injuries while leading us out of the darkness, still. Doppelgangbanger is a groundbreaking collection that I can’t wait to return to. 

Camonghne Felix, author of Build Yourself a Boat

If you are among us who remember Tupac and Biggie and the confusing grief of their murders. If you are among us who spun The College Dropout on obsolete technologies and then found ourselves on campuses sporting a determination to render our favorite CD out of date. If you are among us who sat amongst cousins and cronies on either side of a divide between the fearsome city and the uneasy suburb. These poems sing to us of us. Charleston is one of our most necessary observers of Black boyhood in all its beauty and difficulty. These are poems we need to carry in our hands like a switchblade, just in case.

Nate Marshall, author of Finna

Cortney Lamar Charleston is a master wordsmith. Charleston sees every word as an opportunity to amplify, subvert, twist, and pivot. Doppelgangbanger's images shape-shift before our eyes and elude simple reductions. Are the poems coming of age stories? Yes, and they give tender and fierce critiques of masculinity, and loving portraits of family, and subvert the white gaze. This book drips with so much style, it's actually multiple books.

José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal

Doppelgangbanger speaks many tongues―A-side and B-side, Black slang and Black nerd, Isaac Newton and Negritude―each with equal humor, fluidity, musicality, and heart; each masterfully narrating Charleston's singular perspective: South Side vs. South Suburban. 90s baby. Black, American, boy becoming man. A vibrant example of what poetry is and can be, Doppelgangbanger is a rich, grand book; soaked and stained in hip-hop. In Ed Bullins’ words, "The theme is Blackness": Murray's pomade, Addy Walker, giving dap. The theme is growing up Grown. The theme is I've been a person, place, and thing. With stunning knowledge and sharp vulnerability, Cortney Lamar Charleston has rendered a classical epic of love, war, and self-discovery, in the tradition of Milton, Homer, and Virgil if they were Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

In this lush, complex, and lyrical exploration of Black manhood, Cortney Lamar Charleston exposes trip wires, short fuses, destructive tropes, code switches, guises, and strips them to their sublime core. Doppelgangbanger forces us to examine the myriad ways we perform our masculinity, our pathologies, and the strategies we employ to downplay our genius and sensitivity in an effort to be loved and accepted. Formalistically astute, the still lifes in this collection are rendered so powerfully that we become aim and target in a single line or momentary glance.  Charleston is a poet of the soul, an exalted mathematician in love's calculus.  Hang on with both hands, reader; the poems in this collection are bottomless.

Willie Perdomo, author of The Crazy Bunch

There is no knowing Chicago until it roars, with exploded rhythms and bladed reverence, from the throat of a black man who has lived it, who knows that the city's directive is both nurture and scar, and who emerges from that tumult with a story no one else can tell. With linguistic and lyrical ingenuity, Cortney Lamar Charleston burns his signature into these stanzas—hip-hop serves as pulse, and the lush lines are meant to do what they do to the air. But Doppelgangbanger is so much more than an aural triumph. With an unrelenting intimacy, Charleston dares us into a narrative we think we know—Black boy vs. the scheming wiles of the city vs. the rest of his life—then backhand slaps us toward a singular experience marked by choices that can only guide the life of one man. This is unpredictability. This is intrepid insight. This is dance music. This is heartbreak. This is Black Boy Joy. This is a book that will work you. You best be ready—then you better tell somebody.  

Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art

Reviews and Commentary

You can read more reflections on Doppelgangbanger and its contents from the following writers and venues: Stephanie Burt at London Review of Books, Mandana Chaffa at Chicago Review of Books, Elisa Rowe at Michigan Quarterly Review, Omari Weekes at Poetry Foundation and the teams at Publishers Weekly and The Poetry Question. You can also find Cortney in discussion with Julian Randall about the collection over at The Rumpus.