Set in the suburbs and the cities of the modern world but about the ancient essences of who and what we are, Milk Blood Heat is a collection of love and sex, birth and death. Through the stories of ordinary characters confronted by extraordinary moments of violent yet often beautiful reckoning, Dantiel W. Moniz contemplates human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. It's about two teenage best friends decide to become blood sisters. They mix their blood together in a bowl of milk hat they then take turns drinking from because as one of them says "Pink is the color for girls". Kiera who is White and Ava who is Black are both 13 they are immersed in the delirium of early female adolescence that moment when all boundaries of childhood are breaking down and nothing has arrived yet to replace them, when the vividness and intensity of the world seem overwhelming. Of course, close as they are, they don't get to experience this passage in the same way. Kiera's mother encourages her to "explore her feelings" and believes in "freedom of expression' Ava's mother is more wary, understanding in a way the other characters do not, that there is real danger in freedom they experience in another's company might come with serious and lasting consequences. As the reader dreads, she is correct but not in any way you might anticipate.
