The Devil is a Southpaw by Brandon Hobson

Brandon Hobson is an intriguing Cherokee writer. I loved one of his earlier works, The Removed. In The Devil Is a Southpaw, some of his many layers of meaning went over my head, especially many of the literary, mythological, and historical references. What I did catch was thought-provoking and profound. The first part of the novel, which is a manuscript within the book written by the character Milton, is titled "The Devil is a Southpaw." Milton is a child in the first part and an adult in the second part, and his name and qualities seem to allude to the famous Milton. The manuscript is supposedly based on a movie of that name starring John Wayne. Of course, characters played by John Wayne often killed Native Americans and displayed their white dominance. Milton's story takes place at a residential detention center in Oklahoma around 1988. Although not all of the detainees are Native Americans, Matthew Echota, Milton's friend, is certainly one, and he is the object of Milton's admiration, which is more like an unhealthy envy.

We get to know Mathew Echota as a boy who stutters and is the subject of harassment and bullying. Not only is he victimized by his peers, but also by adults. He's different, has a deformed hand, and is super sensitive. He is artistic, misunderstood, and as the Echota name suggests, represents his people, the Cherokee. His family and his captors dismiss his positive attributes and punish him for being himself, talented and observant. The abusive detention home for children, as Milton describes it, forces us to ask questions about the inhumane treatment of some people and the institutional violence characterizing so much American policy and culture. Hobson gave the sergeants and counselors names such as Ambrose, Jackson, Lee, Vlad, and Strangelove. Some of these historic names are references to famous oppressors. Their pretenses of saving people that they are harming, in a religious and cultural sense, are repulsive yet resonate with reality.

The first half of the book is symbolic, mythological, and dark in its portrayal of the treatment of the children at the detention center. The youngsters are continually dehumanized in multiple ways and told to work on redemption and saving themselves. The children's preoccupation is with escaping, not only from the facility, but also from reality by focusing on writing and art to express themselves. Drawings are interspersed throughout the text to illustrate further the emotions and ambiance of the setting and themes. We don't find out the backstories of the children and why they are in detention until the second half of the book. As we read the second half, we are enlightened about the hopelessness of the main characters and the generational cycles of abuse that plague them. It becomes clear that multigenerational violence and dissatisfaction with life and cultural expectations of masculinity and performance adversely affect oppressed people. The book left me with many questions about good and evil, and of course, the devil. The term "southpaw," referring to Matthew's father's baseball status as well as the devil, definitely carries a negative connotation of disadvantage and stigma. The way education is imposed on marginalized people is both pretentious and disturbing.. The people in control of education in this novel are often less educated than their captive audience. In The Devil is a Southpaw, Brandon Hobson has crafted a complex story with powerful and timely themes that will prompt readers to reflect on relationships within families, communities, institutions, and culture.

The Devil Is A Southpaw. It’s hard to know where to begin with this! To say I was excited (honored? That sounds cheesy but it’s true!) to read Brandon Hobson’s latest work is an understatement, and it did NOT disappoint. To be transparent, I’m a pretty literal person. My brain always struggled with poetry and metaphor, so it took me probably a little longer than it’ll take some other folks to read the first half of The Devil Is A Southpaw, but that’s not because of the writing or the plot or the character or anything other than my own brain wiring.

Hobson’s lyrical, almost dreamlike prose is deliriously intriguing, and it becomes hard to separate your own mind from the book’s pages once you’re fully immersed. The book is undeniably dark, and touches on themes that are crucial for our understanding and also painful to explore, but there is also a level of humanness and humor in the overarching inhumanity that these kids experience that keeps the story powerfully grounded. It’s about memory and reality, friendship and connection, kinship and humanity, secrets and truths, authenticity and curiosity. It’s a book within a book, and this format worked perfectly for Hobson’s latest creation. I have nothing even remotely constructively critical to say, and will probably read this again soon to re-explore some of the themes and see what little nuggets I might have missed the first time around!

I can’t wait for more readers to get their hands and minds around this! Thank you endlessly to Ecco and NetGalley for this e-arc. I’m excited to share it with followers + students!

Written in three parts. The first and most mystical is an account of three boys in prison-Brandon a future artist- Milton Muleborn-raised in charismatic Christianity-and Matthew Echota-a future author.
Brandon is the focus of a short second part but it is imo the third part that clarifies the book and pulls it together.
Aside from the main characters there are multiple secondary characters which are plays/references to characters in history/lore/christianity. A book club read for certain but must be read very carefully or in my case several times to catch all of the subtle references.
Quite good.

Hobson’s two previous novels are quite different from each other. Where the Dead Sit Talking is a grisly coming-of-age story about an orphan. A very grounded story, about the tragedy of the orphan systems of America, and how they are even more tragic in Native American cases.

Then, in The Removed, Hobson opened up with more themes, narrative perspectives, and writing styles, by creating a polyphonic novel centered around the Echota family. In this novel, he showed, in short snippets, a very experimental, intricate and poetic style, that was not present in the previous novel. This new style is more akin to what he seems to do in his short fiction (he’s been published in Conjuctions alongside many greats of dense, experimental prose: Gass, Wallace, etc.)

The jump between those two novels was great, but this present leap with The Devil is A Southpaw really seems like the novel he was meant to write.

The first half is a found manuscript, that weaves a tale of Cherokee traditions/stories, juvenile abuse, adolescent wonderment, and death, with comic elements, often coming from a surreal state.

The second half of the novel, becomes a more grounded explanation of the characters (their backgrounds and such) on a more ‘real/less surreal’ level, but, the second half may not enlighten the reader as much as they would expect. I think this is purposeful, as the first half, though often complex, and ‘trippy,’ seems to explain more than the latter half does.

One of the best novels of the year for sure.