Mist: A Novel
It is 2019 and Josefina Pujols, an overachieving professor going up for tenure at Tanner University ("The Ninth Ivy"), watches in dismay as social media popularity threatens to take over the academic standards she had been rigorously trained to uphold.
When Doralis Montero, who had mysteriously quit her prestigious professorship two years earlier, reaches out and explains the sinister reasons behind her disappearance, Jo leaps into a research rabbit hole teeming with South American Nazi villages and racial impostors, while dodging her university's increasingly absurdist requests. Despite the life-threatening risks inherent to this research project, Jo glows with newfound purpose and reignites a passion for knowledge that bureaucratic demands had almost extinguised.
Available at most online and some independent bookstores. Signed limited edition versions available here.
Read the first few chapters here.
“Fearless as always, in Dixa’s premiere novel, Mist, she sets the stage for an absurd encounter with some of late liberalism’s sludge with wit and humor. In Mist, multiple realities collide— from the homeland, Ayiti (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), to the university office—haunted realities permeate both, exposing how some of these corpsed (forced) relations devour possibilities for actual kinship and political coalesence. Through the cunning conning of the “ConKin” (Contemporary Kinetics) and their flagrant micro-aggressions, Mist provides a window into the necessary counter-action of spirit work to transform the scene of bad faith actors into a surrealist play that is both hilarious and tragic. I’ve known Dixa as a heavy hitting scholar and thinker, and now to meet her in her craft as a novelist is both heartwarming and inspiring.”
Ligia Lewis, choreographer, dancer, artist, and director
"Dixa Ashariel Ramirez’s Mist is a generic chimaera, blending satire, mystery, and the cult-novel, interwoven with humming, thrumming threads of ancient spirituality.”
Anya Lewis-Meeks, novelist and professor of literary arts in Apogee Journal. Read the full interview here.
"What if the worst people you know making the worst art imaginable were not only deciding the future of your career but were somehow hijacking your cosmic destiny too? Josefina, Mist’s reluctant heroine goes to war against the shady forces conspiring against her and other Black women in academia armed with a fabulous wardrobe, hefty liquor cabinet, and a chaotic group chat. Hijinks, horror, and revelations ensue. I couldn’t put it down."
Marina Bilbija, professor of English at Wesleyan University and author of The Black Sojourner Press (forthcoming)