The Last Suspicious Holdout (Amistad Press, 2022)

The critically acclaimed author of The Rib King returns with an eagerly anticipated collection of short stories including the title story written exclusively for this volume, that explore relationships in a Black neighborhood over the course from the late 1980s to the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The twelve stories in The Last Suspicious Holdout and Other Stories capture powerful and poignant moments in the everyday lives of African American families, friends, and neighbors. Taking place in an unnamed “sliver of Southern suburbia” in the years spanning from the beginning of the Clinton presidency to the eve of Barack Obama’s election, each of these exceptional works of short fiction explore how the inequities of our society—in the criminal justice system, education, and healthcare—as well as issues like the “war on drugs”—shape and scar ordinary lives in deeply personal ways.   

In “False Cognates,” a formerly incarcerated attorney struggles with paying raising tuition costs to keep his troubled son in an elite private school. In “There He Go,” a young girl whose mother moves them constantly yearns for stability and clings to a picture of the grandfather she doesn’t know, inventing stories of his greatness that contrast with the actual man.  

In this fearless and at times funny collection, Ladee Hubbard transcends stereotypes to provide a fuller portrait of Black American life and its undercurrents. The characters inhabiting her world present diverse configurations of family—grandmothers and granddaughters who live together as roommates; cousins and uncles who form tight bonds; and fathers who are mainly present. Each is part of a community where daycares and babysitters are never taken for granted; where books and words are revered. 

The Last Suspicious Holdout and Other Stories mirrors and celebrates Black resilience. Though their finances, jobs, and businesses may be vulnerable to forces they cannot control, the neighbors in these stories bravely confront the realities of their lives, and firmly believe that hope is not a promise but a choice. 

The Rib King (Amistad Press, 2021)

The acclaimed author of The Talented Ribkins deconstructs painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in early the twentieth century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family.

For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household's all-black staff, along with "Miss Mamie," the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices—the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to civilize boys like August.

But the Barclays fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie's delicious rib sauce to local markets under the brand name "The Rib King"—using a caricature of a wildly grinning August on the label—Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash, agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.

Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, The Rib King is an unsparing examination of America's fascination with black iconography and exploitation that redefines African American stereotypes in literature. In this powerful, disturbing, and timely novel, Ladee Hubbard reveals who people actually are, and most importantly, who and what they are not.

Praise

“The inimitable Hubbard ... delivers a dazzling tour-de-force in this richly painted, perfectly timed meditation on privilege and fury.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Ladee Hubbard’s sophomore novel, ‘The Rib King,’ is a fascinating story about the intersection of ambition, race and revenge. … ‘The Rib King’ upends the racial calculus that amplifies the stories of the privileged few, offering rich, lovingly rendered portraits of working-class Black people.”
—The Washington Post

“A fascinating story about the intersection of ambition, race and revenge.”
—The LA Times

"Ultimately the reason to read The Rib King is not its timeliness or its insight into politics or Black culture, but because it accomplishes what the best fiction sets out to do: It drops you into a world you could not otherwise visit and makes you care deeply about what happens there."
—BookPage (starred review)

The Talented Ribkins (Melville House, 2017)

Winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award
Winner of the William Faulkner - William Wisdom Prize
An Indie Next Pick
Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction

At seventy-two, Johnny Ribkins shouldn’t have such problems: He’s got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it’s curtains for Johnny.

What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African-American family that has been gifted with super powers that are rather sad, but superpowers nonetheless. For example, Johnny’s father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he’s been there or not.

In the old days, the Ribkins family tried to apply their gifts to the civil rights effort, calling themselves the Justice Committee. But when their, eh, superpowers proved insufficient, the group fell apart. Out of frustration Johnny and his brother used their talents to stage a series of burglaries, each more daring than the last.

Fast forward a couple decades and Johnny’s on a race against the clock to dig up loot he’s stashed all over Florida.  His brother is gone, but he has an unexpected sidekick: his brother’s daughter, Eloise, who has a special superpower of her own.

Inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois’s famous essay “The Talented Tenth” and fuelled by Ladee Hubbard’s marvelously original imagination, The Talented Ribkins is a big-hearted debut novel about race, class, politics, and the unique gifts that, while they may cause some problems from time to time, bind a family together.

Praise

“For sheer reading pleasure Ladee Hubbard’s original and wildly inventive novel is in a class by itself.”
—Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Song of Solomon

“The Talented Ribkins is a charming and delightful debut novel with a profound heart, and Ladee Hubbard’s voice is a welcome original.”
—Mary Gaitskill, author of Bad Behavior and Veronica

“What a pleasure it was to take a road trip with The Talented Ribkins, a simultaneously gifted and flawed family, sharp-witted but prone to making utterly human errors. Ladee Hubbard has given us a fresh and original debut novel.”
—Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up

“With The Talented Ribkins, Ladee Hubbard proves herself to be a rare talent who pops onto the scene fully formed as a writer of power and purpose. This is a heart-wrenching quest into the absurdity that is family. Like the best literary fantasies, The Talented Ribkins succeeds because the heart that beats at its center couldn’t be realer.”
—Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day and Pym

“Ladee Hubbard’s The Talented Ribkins is a first novel of extraordinary confidence and panache. Brisk, funny, tender, scathing, the book is a road story with teeth, a secret history of those black Americans whom W. E. B. Du Bois called ’the talented tenth’—underground, in plain sight, sometimes both at the same time—superheroes of reality.”
—Zachary Lazar, author of Sway