After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. 

Surrounded by the failure of systems, including his family, the public school system and democratic society, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling like he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, most lessons were taught through violence, and, to make matters worse, he always seemed to be hungry. To escape these foes, he began retreating inward. In SINK, Thomas queries the possibility of escape through fantasy worlds, while grappling with children’s inability to change their circumstances. In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the trouble of cruelty without heroics or reprieve and explores how the cycle of hostility permeates our environments. And yet, even in the depths of isolation, there are unexpected moments of joy carved out as Thomas finds kinship.