In his highly anticipated second poetry collection, Doppelgangbanger, Cortney Lamar Charleston examines the performance of Black masculinity in the U.S., and its relationship to family, love and community.

With stunning knowledge and sharp vulnerability, Cortney Lamar Charleston has rendered a classical epic of love, war, and self-discovery, in the tradition of Milton, Homer, and Virgil if they were Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

—Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

“Cortney Lamar Charleston burns his signature into these stanzas. With an unrelenting intimacy, he dares us into a narrative we think we know—Black boy vs. the scheming wiles of the city vs. the rest of his life—then backhand slaps us toward a singular experience marked by choices that can only guide the life of one man.”

—Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art

“Cortney Lamar Charleston is one of our most necessary observers of Black boyhood in all its beauty and difficulty. These poems sing to us of us.”

—Nate Marshall, author of Finna