In Mark Doten’s brilliant first story collection “Whites,” the excoriating stories dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country.
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In This Spotlight On Whites
About Whites
Narrated by a crosscutting array of White people, Doten’s stories spotlight the self-serving logic through which their characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the narrative of our time. They run the political spectrum from “well-intentioned” liberals and newly woke CEOs to Trump appointees, QAnon adherents, and believers in replacement theory.
There is an anti-vax nursing home employee, an anti-woke billionaire, a nonbinary sneaker podcaster turned January 6 insurrectionist, a nonprofit LA housing president dubbed “WORST KAREN EVER,” an elderly Republican in denial of his COVID-19 diagnosis, teenage YouTubers responding to a shooting at their suburban Minnesota school, a demonically possessed cookie manufacturer drafting a BLM statement with his new Black employee, and a gay White supremacist figure who may be a joke on 4chan, but will have his revenge.
While their identities and allegiances differ, all of them are united by a ferocious belief in themselves, certain that everything they’ve done can be justified, if you’ll just hear them out. In Whites, Doten has written a relentless book that confirms their standing as one of the great satirists of their generation.
Praise for Whites
“[Doten] pulls just as few punches and experiments just as wildly in this collection of stories [in Whites] that attempt to capture the more demented and dismaying aspects of Americans at one another’s throats and terminally online.”—The Washington Post
“Doten (Trump Sky Alpha) delivers an uncompromising satire of contemporary white supremacy in this bold collection [Whites]…Every character is painfully convincing in their anger, condescension, or meekness. It’s a wild and caustic ride.”―Publishers Weekly
“These venomous, discomforting stories may soon feel “of their time,” but what a time. Imagine the white malaise of Sam Lipsyte and the heightened satire of Gary Shteyngart shot through with a tab of Mark Leyner’s hyperstylized metafiction. Maybe that’s the right frame of mind to ask what white people are really made of, these days. A consciously caustic critique of white fragility that means to leave a mark.”―Kirkus Reviews
“Doten is a skilled satirist, and this collection matches the disorienting comic tenor of their previous novels, Trump Sky Alpha and The Infernal.”―Emma Alpern, Vulture
“Whites is a work of wild genius, and Mark Doten is an outrageously gifted writer―who else could make me fall hopelessly in love with characters so wrongheaded and bloody minded, so sweetly clueless and dangerously stupid? These stories are stunningly beautiful, dark as hell, hilarious, heartbreaking, profane, profound, and (unfortunately!) very timely. This collection makes me feel lucky to be alive at this absurd moment, if only to witness Doten’s brilliant alchemy.”―Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe
“I am forever in awe of Mark Doten, a virtuoso stylist and ventriloquist whose visionary satires are spurred by a moral urgency that marks him as my generation’s Bernhard as well our Burroughs. Whites is a pathbreaking brainderanger―blistering and prescient, sure, but let’s not forget funny and dirty and extremely fucking weird.”―Justin Taylor, author of Reboot
“Mark Doten finds beauty where the rest of us despair. I heart these stories, which crown our moment.”―Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus
“Mark Doten’s work has always been brilliant, daring, and absolutely vital. Whites is a collection that could upend fiction, exhort nonfiction, and maybe even save us if enough of you agree.”―Dennis Cooper, author of I Wished
“Mark Doten’s writing reminds me of the thankless work of anti-fascist researchers who spend their time training their focus on what many of us would rather not think about or read, let alone immerse ourselves in. Nearly unreadable. Nearly unputdownable. Gray eyed and devastating in its focus, irresistible in its craft, this fucked up book turns irony back on itself and stabs into real heart.”―Madeline ffitch, author of Stay and Fight
“Prescient about our current moment to an unsettling degree, Mark Doten’s Whites pushes satire to its farthest edge, tapping deeply into the id of American society and capturing something truly horrifying and real in the process.”―John Keene, author of Playland
About Mark Doten, Author of Whites
Mark Doten is the author of the novels Trump Sky Alpha and The Infernal. They were named to Granta’s once-a-decade “Best of Young American Novelists” list, and their writing has appeared in Granta, N+1, Guernica, The Lterary Review, The Believer, and Conjunctions. As a librettist, their work has been staged at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, the Los Angeles Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Music Theatre NOW festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
They are the executive editor for literary fiction at Soho Press, and have taught in the creative writing programs of Princeton and Columbia, they are an editor at Soho Press and have taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. They live in Princeton, New Jersey, and Mexico City..
Their first story collection,Whites, is from Graywolf Press.
You can connect with Mark Doten on their website, and on Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Source: Publisher and Author website
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Pub Date: Aug 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781644452905
Titles by Mark Doten and Others
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