Rainbow designed cover of story collection LIGHT SKIN

LIGHT SKIN GONE TO WASTE 

A  Collection from Kimbilio Fellow Toni Ann Johnson

In 1962 Philip Arrington, a psychologist with a PhD from Yeshiva, arrives in the small, mostly blue-collar town of Monroe, New York, to rent a house for himself and his new wife. They’re Black, something the man about to show him the house doesn’t know. With that, we’re introduced to the Arringtons: Phil, Velma, his daughter Livia (from a previous marriage), and his youngest, Madeline, soon to be born. They’re cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. They’re also troubled, arrogant, and throughout the linked stories, falling apart.

We follow the family as Phil begins his private practice, as Velma opens her antiques shop, and as they buy new homes, collect art, go skiing, and have overseas adventures. It seems they’ve made it in the white world. However, young Maddie, one of the only Black children in town, bears the brunt of the racism and the invisible barriers her family’s money, education, and determination can’t free her from. As she grows up and realizes her father is sleeping with white women, her mother is violently mercurial, and her half-sister resents her, Maddie must decide who she is despite, or perhaps precisely because of, her family.

Toni Ann Johnson

KIMBILIO FELLOW AND AUTHOR

Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for her linked story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay, and published by UGA Press in 2022. The book was a finalist for a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. A novella, Homegoing, won Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest in 2020 and was released by the press in 2021. Johnson’s first novel Remedy for a Broken Angel (2014) was a finalist for a 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her short fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Callaloo Journal, Fiction Magazine, the Coachella Review, and many other publications. Johnson has been a Kimbilio fellow (2024), a Hurston/Wright fellow (2021), and a Callaloo Writing Workshop fellow (2016). She’s received support for her writing from the One-Story Summer Conference, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

TONI ANN’S WEBSITE

Five Questions for TONI ANN JOHNSON

The book is autobiographical fiction about my Black family in a mostly white town from the 1960s—the late 70s. The stories are based on real events. The characters Phil and Velma are based on my emotionally immature parents. Surviving them, and surviving the subtle and overt racism of the community was what inspired me most.

The setting and the characters came first, but the events were a close second. Once I chose the events, I was able to consider the ideas and issues (in this case racism and narcissism) that I’d link together throughout to further explore the characters.

One story, “Lucky,” involves the sexual assault of a child. That child was based on me and the assault was based on a real event. It was excruciating for obvious reasons. It was also an interesting exercise piecing together the steps that led to the assault and the protagonist’s awareness of some adult behaviors and naivete about others.

Any day that I write is a good day. I think it’s the best use of my time. If I write and get to hang out with my spouse, that’s an especially good day. A day that I receive an offer of publication is also a really good day.

1. Growing up as one of the only Black kids in my town made me a perpetual outsider. I tend to write about people who don’t fit into their communities. 2. Being raised by difficult, sometimes abusive parents has led me to explore emotional and physical abuse in my fiction. My characters often don’t fit into their families successfully. 3. I began studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute when I was fourteen and continued training there throughout college. I tend to write characters as if I’m going to play them. My approach to creating them from the inside out is similar to how I was trained to act. I think this shows up in dialogue as well as the voices of my characters.