Books with author Chris Terrio

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year "Black Card holds many modes and many moods in its packed and tactile narrative. Chris L. Terry has managed to capture, all at once, the complications of being black, being young, and being in love. This is a detailed ride about finding one's way to the inside, and finding that the inside isn't all you thought it would be. This book is a mirror, inside of which I saw so many selves." ―Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us and Go Ahead in the Rain Chris L. Terry’s Black Card is an uncompromising examination of American identity. In an effort to be “black enough,” a mixed-race punk rock musician indulges his own stereotypical views of African American life by doing what his white bandmates call “black stuff.” After remaining silent during a racist incident, the unnamed narrator has his Black Card revoked by Lucius, his guide through Richmond, Virginia, where Confederate flags and memorials are a part of everyday life. Determined to win back his Black Card, the narrator sings rap songs at an all-white country music karaoke night, absorbs black pop culture, and attempts to date his black coworker Mona, who is attacked one night. The narrator becomes the prime suspect and earns the attention of John Donahue, a local police officer with a grudge dating back to high school. Forced to face his past, his relationships with his black father and white mother, and the real consequences and dangers of being black in America, the narrator must choose who he is before the world decides for him.

Chris L. Terry's debut young adult novel Zero Fade chronicles eight days in the life of inner-city Richmond, Virginia teen Kevin Phifer as he deals with wack haircuts, bullies, last-year fly gear, his uncle Paul coming out as gay, and being grounded. From his punk rock young adulthood to teaching writing to juvenile inmates, Chris L. Terry knows the vernacular of youth, its rhythms, relationships, and dreams. Equipped with a deft comic hand, Terry has created a young adult novel like few before it.

This is the tie-in book to a two part BBC 1 documentary series to be screened at 9.00pm in October and which will end on the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October. Chris Terrill is famous for his fly on the wall documentaries which have been watched by millions and received wide critical acclaim. We have had HMS Brilliant and The Cruise (audience reached 11 million). Chris has based himself for the last few months in the very heart of the modern day naval experience. We will see: a Royal Naval Chaplain exorcising a haunted barracks in Portsmouth, a vodka-fuelled Trafalgar Day celebration in the British Embassy in the Moscow in 2004, a Polaris submarine crossing the Atlantic on an exercise in which it will 'pretend' to nuke America, the patrol of the frigate HMS Chatham in the Gulf, suddenly diverted to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami and the Fleet Review, where HMS Chatham in honour of her humanitarian role in Asia, will lead the entire assembly of a hundred warships, British and foreign, down the Solent. Chris is the only film maker to be granted exclusive, behind the scenes access by the Navy this year. During the filming Chris will capture the heart and soul of the sailors aboard, and on shore: there will be plenty of irreverence, practical jokes and laughs, and the human reality of the families left behind for months on end as warships and submarines go on extended tours of duty. This will be the fullest ever account of the Modern Navy in a year when the Trafalgar Day celebrations and the Fleet review will attract an avalanche of publicity.