rivers_bend

I've been reading Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan for one of my classes, and it is absolutely wonderful. I pretty much have to agree with the cover quote by Terry McMillan:

Randall Kenan is a genius; our black Marquez. He weaves myth, folktales, magic, and reality like no one else I know, and doesn't miss a beat.

I've read four or five of the dozen stories, and am on the second reading of the third of the ones I have to write an essay on today. And I'm gleeing again over his genius way with words. The passage that made me think of LJ, unsurprisingly, was the one about men's thangs.

Cannonball's thang had been fat and black and mean-looking; the doctors in the Marine Corps lopped off the foreskin so that it looked like a wicked, unstoppable black snake. This boy's thang was long and brown and smart-looking; he still had his skin and the tip peeked out slyly like a one-eyed secret behind a veil. ...Cannonball's behind had been like his namesake, bunched-up black metal, solid as a train wheel. This boy's cheeks were round like dishes and soft to the touch, smooth.

Throughout the stories I've read he uses simile and metaphor in surprising ways that render everything vivid and alive and take me right with him wherever he's going. And he writes characters I want to spend time with. I forget, until I get a new one, how much I love collections of short stories. I highly recommend this one. Even if magical realism isn't your thing, I'd give it a try if you can get your hands on a copy.