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Inlandia Institute’s

Blacklandia Events Series Presents

The Confession of Copeland Cane with Keenan Norris

In conversation with Eric DeVaughnn

Sunday, February 6, 2022, 1:30-2:30 PM PST

On Zoom

Free and open to the public, but registration is required.

https://tinyurl.com/CopelandCane

On Sunday, February 6, from 1:30-2:30 PM, Inlandia’s Blacklandia Events Series will present a conversation you won’t want to miss! Join author and educator Eric DeVaughnn and novelist, essayist, and short story writer Keenan Norris as they discuss Norris’s latest novel, The Confession of Copeland Cane. This online event is free, but registration is required: https://tinyurl.com/CopelandCane. All are welcome.

Publisher’s Weekly named The Confession of Copeland Cane one of the best books of the summer: “Norris has created a voice that cannot be ignored.”

BuzzFeed calls The Confession of Copeland Cane a “significant new voice in fiction. Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.”

About the novel: Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive …

He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates.

Recruited by the nearby private school even as he and his folks face eviction, Copeland is doing his damnedest to do right by himself, for himself. Yet the myriad forces at play entrap him, and while Copeland’s wry awareness of the absurd keeps life passable (as do his friends and their surprising array of survival skills), when he is caught in the aftermath of a protest rally against police violence, everything changes.

Set in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America is a profound reflection of our present moment.