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Monday, August 25, 2008

Ghost Children - D. Winston Brown

- - Abby - -
This is a story sort of centered around black anger in the personal experience of one young man. I can't say that as an upper-middle class white girl I really relate to it, but its an interesting read. While disturbed a little by the content, the unfamiliar emotions, the writing is good and the story is circumspective and revealing. It definitely shows violence as an outcome of societal conditions (forget blaming it on video games and action flicks). I think it also shows growth, the ability of people, one-by-one, to mature past that stage in life, and perhaps eventually an entire generation can get past it.

It actually reminded me of an interesting article I read recently about the relevance of Jesse Jackson in a Barack Obama world. Basically, its hard to buy Jackson's angry "the man will always try to keep a brother down" rap when The Man is, in fact, a brother. If I can find the article again I will link it.

3 comments:

ann said...

I really liked how he clearly described the memories that the gun triggered. Even though I couldn't relate well to the story (for the same reasons Abby gave), I've had the experience of seeing/smelling/hearing something and suddenly memories boil to the surface.

Anonymous said...

his is more than a short story about an angry black teen during the Civil Rights movement. It is about the need for power, and the search for manhood.

It also reminds me of Plato when Brown says that he is now a graduate and his friends are addicts. Plato once wrote in the Republic about how we must think logically and not emotionally. He wrote about people who choose their next life after they die. If people choose logically then people would progress. That is related to this story because our country has evolved (in a way) to make better decisions and also to virtually end racism, or just excepting racism.

Katie Taylor
Golden CO

The Reverend Al Sharpton said...

I just read this short-story and had an impulse to try and find some way to contact the author. This was the first site that popped up in a google search for his name.

I thought this short-story was one of the best I've ever read. To be completely candid, as I first started reading it I assumed the narrator was white. Maybe that was just my natural impulse to mold voices on a page to fit an image I could identify with. Somewhere along the way it became clear the author wasn't white, and the story changed entirely, both on the page and in my head. Maybe the author knew what he was doing or maybe it was just natural storytelling. Either way, I sat there, nodding, believing in the frustration and disappointment in a way I never really have before.

Anyways, hope to see more from D. Winston Brown in the future.

-Dave