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Judgment Day & Other White Lies
Judgment Day & Other White Lies is a short fiction collection that deconstructs whiteness by retelling versions of Greek, Roman, and Christian myths, concepts, and characters through a contemporary lens that reads whiteness into history as a force of destruction for white characters (in addition to those they oppress). From an alternative biblical Genesis about apes having orgies while on magic mushrooms to create western civilization (as told by the kinds of philosophers who have to be stoned themselves), to a retelling of the Oresteia where the white heavy metal musician Orestes is helping his aging mother Dawn commit suicide, to a white graffiti writer, magician, and cultural mis-appropriator named Per-C who fundamentally alters reality by painting fantastical 'Dusa portraits all over the city of Houston to the eponymous story Judgment Day that primarily concerns the mind-altering-collapsing effects of a hallucinogenic on a Christlike white man who has two sets of memories stuck in his head, these stories show the tragicomic consequences of what happens when white people identify with the white lie of an identity that lives a fiction to maintain power.
164 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2022
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About the author
Mike Hilbig
4 books15 followersMike Hilbig graduated in 2017 from Sam Houston State University with an MFA in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing. He teaches English at the University of Houston-Downtown and at Lone Star College. His first short fiction collection, Judgment Day & Other White Lies, debuts from Madville publshing in Feb. of '22.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 17, 2022
Disclaimer: I received an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) from Reedsy Discovery to review before publication.
A sharp-edged collected fiction on American values that blends the certainty of mythology with the horrors of distorted revisionist history.
Judgment Day takes the shape of seven stories ranging in form, reality, and aspects of Greek mythology to illustrate how tragedy becomes desensitized for our cast of narrators and contributing witnesses.
Some stories here use the traditional first and third person narrative structure, following the down-and-out white male narrators of Houston, Texas, who imbue upon themselves the names of tragic figures in Greek mythology in what are revealed to be, for the most part, aspirational acts of self-care in a world that has otherwise abandoned them.
An academic research paper on a street artist's mesmerizing control over an unconsenting audience includes a slew of David Foster Wallace-esque endnotes that tell a completely different story. A transcription of a psychologist's conversations with a patient reveal the side effects of a hallucinogenic trip where he spends his time chasing after a life that feels more real than his current one. There is also a poem that longs for a world lost to the onslaught of Fake News and climate change from the perspective of Orpheus, if you are prose-averse.
Hilbig's more politically-oriented stories such as "The Ballgame at Xibalba" and "The Bell Witch Hunter & the Curse of Jacksonian History" are his stronger pieces, where he leans into the realm of satire with precision. An underground basketball tournament run by high-profile politicians and celebrities pits desperate Black characters against each other for a fatal opportunity to kickstart a nest-egg of intergenerational wealth. "The Bell Witch" tells us in so much as a sentence how our society came to completely erase and remake our own history after the year 1820 in favor of Andrew Jackson's preferred account.
The shock of reading the alternative histories in Judgment Day hits hard at a time when the American public school system is encouraged by right-wing spokesmen to ban teaching critical race theory and books on Black, queer, indigenous, and otherwise marginalized versions of American history that are omitted from standardized textbooks. Hard facts are hard to find in Judgment Day, but Hilbig suggests that may be the whole point. What can we do when we no longer know what the truth looks like?
For fans of the outrageously honest 2022 film Don't Look Up, Hilbig's Judgment Day is an exercise to American readers—and white folk in particular—to challenge the truth told by each and every narrator, from one lived reality to the next.
A sharp-edged collected fiction on American values that blends the certainty of mythology with the horrors of distorted revisionist history.
Judgment Day takes the shape of seven stories ranging in form, reality, and aspects of Greek mythology to illustrate how tragedy becomes desensitized for our cast of narrators and contributing witnesses.
Some stories here use the traditional first and third person narrative structure, following the down-and-out white male narrators of Houston, Texas, who imbue upon themselves the names of tragic figures in Greek mythology in what are revealed to be, for the most part, aspirational acts of self-care in a world that has otherwise abandoned them.
An academic research paper on a street artist's mesmerizing control over an unconsenting audience includes a slew of David Foster Wallace-esque endnotes that tell a completely different story. A transcription of a psychologist's conversations with a patient reveal the side effects of a hallucinogenic trip where he spends his time chasing after a life that feels more real than his current one. There is also a poem that longs for a world lost to the onslaught of Fake News and climate change from the perspective of Orpheus, if you are prose-averse.
Hilbig's more politically-oriented stories such as "The Ballgame at Xibalba" and "The Bell Witch Hunter & the Curse of Jacksonian History" are his stronger pieces, where he leans into the realm of satire with precision. An underground basketball tournament run by high-profile politicians and celebrities pits desperate Black characters against each other for a fatal opportunity to kickstart a nest-egg of intergenerational wealth. "The Bell Witch" tells us in so much as a sentence how our society came to completely erase and remake our own history after the year 1820 in favor of Andrew Jackson's preferred account.
The shock of reading the alternative histories in Judgment Day hits hard at a time when the American public school system is encouraged by right-wing spokesmen to ban teaching critical race theory and books on Black, queer, indigenous, and otherwise marginalized versions of American history that are omitted from standardized textbooks. Hard facts are hard to find in Judgment Day, but Hilbig suggests that may be the whole point. What can we do when we no longer know what the truth looks like?
For fans of the outrageously honest 2022 film Don't Look Up, Hilbig's Judgment Day is an exercise to American readers—and white folk in particular—to challenge the truth told by each and every narrator, from one lived reality to the next.
March 13, 2022
Excellent short story collection. Engaging and makes you think. Wow!
December 28, 2021
I was privileged to be among the first to read Mike Hilbig’s first book - an interesting peek inside the brain of an interesting man. It is all at once funny and sad and poignant and clever and challenging and thought provoking. These stories are complex and you’ll want to keep peeling back the layers of the onion to discover deeper and deeper levels in his storytelling. I highly recommend it!
December 29, 2021
A surreal collection of stories that mix gritty life with myth. You can enjoy the stories at face value or dig deeper to find philosophical nuggets on culture, religion, and race. If you’re a Houstonian you’ll appreciate a few nods to the Texas city which Hilbig also calls home.
September 14, 2022
This collection of short stories was fantastic. The tales are compelling, funny, and devastating by turns. The titular story was an amazing journey. I am so glad I read this and I'm sure I will be re-reading this one again soon!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews