Punk Rock, Race, and the City of Richmond: Chris L. Terry on “Black Card”

Chris L. Terry

Chris L. Terry’s second novel, Black Card, is a lot of things. It’s an immersion in one city’s punk scene, a thoughtful consideration of its narrator’s struggles with questions of identity, and an unsettling depiction of aggressions both micro and macro. Terry writes about music from his own experience, and there’s a memorably lived-in quality to Black Card, even when Terry takes the novel in more stylized directions. With the paperback edition of the novel out now, I checked in with Terry to discuss the book’s genesis, its relationship to punk, and what the (Young) Pioneers have to do with any of this. 

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