Whites: Stories

The excoriating stories in Mark Doten’s brilliant first collection dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country. Narrated by a cross-cutting array of White people—stupid and/or evil, well-meaning and/or blinkered—they spotlight the self-serving logic through which an array of characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the story of our time. 

Doten's characters run the political spectrum from self-righteous liberals and newly woke CEOs to Trump appointees, QAnon adherents, and believers in “replacement theory.” There is an anti-vax nursing home employee, a red-pilled mindfulness coach turned January 6 insurrectionist, the president of a Los Angeles housing nonprofit deemed by the internet to be “WORST KAREN EVER,” an elderly Republican who refuses to believe he’s dying of Covid (spoiler: he does), a pair of teens in suburban Minnesota making TikToks in the wake of a school shooting, and a gay White supremacist who may be a joke on 4chan right now, but will have his revenge.

While their backgrounds and allegiances differ, all of these characters 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 Mark Doten has written a relentless book that confirms his standing as one of the great satirists of his generation.