Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

Thank you to the Bennington Writing Seminars and particularly Alexander Chee, who insisted that this initial short story be made into a novel. Have you ever steered anyone wrong?

Thank you to Leipzig University and ZORA Magazine for giving me the space to write and rewrite this novel as I managed teaching and editing, respectively.

Thanks be to God for peace beyond all understanding as I grappled with very difficult topics.

Thank you to Harlem for all her history, sound, cuisine, and magic.

Thank you to RD for all of your love.

About the Author

MORGAN JERKINS is a senior editor at Medium’s ZORA magazine. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Vogue, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Elle, Rolling Stone, and BuzzFeed, among many other outlets. She lives in New York.

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Also by Morgan Jerkins

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CAUL BABY. Copyright © 2021 by Morgan Jerkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Cover painting © 2020 Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images

FIRST EDITION

Digital Edition APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-287317-0

Version 03012021

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-287308-8

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