Winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Prose poems that profile the interrelationship of the two central characters, looking deeply into their psyches and thoughts of race, class, and identity. Read a press release about this book

Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man is a riveting interrogation of two men in a relationship. Ronaldo V. Wilson's prose poems are alternately tough and tender probes into the underbelly of their psyche. With audacity and wit, reminiscent of the work of Hilton Als, bell hooks, Franz Fanon and James Baldwin, Wilson uses narrative to decode sociopolitical narratives around race, sexuality, and class. Identity, Wilson seems to say, is only a collection of stories - the ones told about us in battle with the ones we tell ourselves. What we have here is palpable consciousness: a stunning achievement. - Claudia Rankine