Slapboxing with Jesus is a collection of short stories that was originally published in 1999 and written by Victor LaValle. LaValle, who is an associate professor at the prestigious Columbia University, is an American author and writer. He has written the short stories for this collection, Slapboxing with Jesus, as well as four novels. Though LaValle is most known for his fiction, he has also written many essays and reviews for multiple magazines and newspapers.
In terms of structure, Slapboxing with Jesus contains eleven distinct yet connected stories that all take place during the 1970s and 1980s. The protagonists of all eleven of these stories are all young Latino and black men who live in New York City. In one short story, "Raw Daddy," one major idea is “unsafe sex,” and the young man of this story is sent away because he is homosexual, and through this alienation, others hope to “cure” him of it. In another, "Getting Ugly," a hooker successfully seduces the young man of this story. Though the stories themselves are independent of one another, the themes that they all deal with are strikingly similar and together, Slapboxing with Jesus becomes an interconnected work within itself.
