Red Emma’s

It's 1963 in the small town of Monroe, New York. The Arringtons, a Black family, buy a house in a picturesque, all-white neighborhood. Some residents are welcoming, but many react to Dr. Philip Arrington, his wife Velma, and their daughters Livia and Maddie by conspiring against their success in both big and small ways. Amid this mix of hostility and shaky acceptance, the Arringtons must navigate their careers, deal with a volatile marriage, and raise their daughters.

This book follows Johnson's previous collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste, which won the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award. Through multiple perspectives and moments in time, from the 1960s to 2022, readers are invited into the lives of the eldest daughter, who longs for her father's affection while striving for independence; the youngest daughter, who seeks to overcome childhood pain through music and love; a father practicing psychology while engaging in affairs with the white women of the town; and a mother dealing with infidelity while raising her daughters in a place that rejects them.

Deeply emotional, funny, and unflinchingly honest, But Where's Home? lays bare the realities of Black life in America, challenging readers to confront racism, classism, colonized thinking, narcissism, abuse, and troubled parent-child relationships. Johnson's complex and interwoven characters create a kaleidoscope of truths about human nature and race relations in the United States.

Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O'Connor Award for her linked story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. The book was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize. Johnson won the Humanitas Prize and the Christopher Award for her screenplay Ruby Bridges, a film directed by Euzhan Palcy and screened regularly in schools to teach children about the civil rights movement. Johnson won a second Humanitas Prize for writing the film Crown Heights, a Showtime film about the 1991 conflict between Hasidic Jews and African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Johnson's forthcoming book, But Where's Home?, is a work of historical fiction and autobiographical fiction that examines race and class, based on Johnson's family in Monroe, NY, a predominantly white, conservative town. The book was selected for the inaugural Screen Door Press Prize for Fiction and is forthcoming in February 2026.

Dr. Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman is author of the poetry collections For the Girls Who Do Too Much and The Summoning of Black Joy. She is an associate professor in the humanities department at Coppin State University, and founder of Liberated Muse Arts Group and the 501(c)3 nonprofit, Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc. The second poet laureate of Prince George's County, MD (2023-2025), she is based in Baltimore, Md.