Holler, Child

Stories

By: LaToya Watkins

Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Aaron Goodson, JD Jackson, Lisa Renee Pitts, De'Onna Prince, Kacie Rogers

Longlisted for the National Book Award

Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Fiction

Winner of the Writers' League of Texas Book Award in Fiction

An extraordinary short story collection about community, home, betrayal, and forgiveness—from a writer whose “spellbinding, buoyant”* storytelling will break your heart as it tends to the wounds.
*Texas Monthly

In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom.

In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And “Time After” shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother—the one who saved her many times over.

Throughout Holler, Child, we see love lost and gained, and grief turned to hope. This collection peers deeply into lives of women and men experiencing intimate and magnificent reckonings—exploring how race, power, and inequality map on the individual, and demonstrating the mythic proportions of everyday life.

Poetry of sorrow

These stories were beautifully, poetically written. though the topics were trying, the characters and descriptions were fully realized.

Great book and readers

Stories of ordinary folk. The underdogs. The underbelly. Well-written. Authentic and heartbreaking. That’s life, isn’t it?

Excellent Debut Collection

Holler, Child riveted me. It helps that I come from a family of Black Texans, so the voices and characters were familiar to me. I feel like I know these people. Watkins nails the Black Texan voice in stories that are poignant and vibrant. I highly recommend her book.