Customer Reviews

I Got Somebody in Staunton: Stories

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I liked every story in this collection, and truly admired several. My favorite was the title story, "I Got Somebody in Staunton," because it deviates from the book's dominant, narrow narrative view of race relations. The protagonist, who has valid reasons to be concerned about the environment he's in, learns that the reality of the situation was slightly different from what he'd perceived. A very powerful story is "Urban Renewal," about a bereaved mother who challenges a condescending college president to take a truly meaningful step to reach out to the poor, black community that is neighbor to his campus.

Fans of Edward P. Jones will like this collection very much.

I Got Somebody in Staunton is a collection of ten short stories by award winning author, William Henry Lewis, that tenderly embraces human condition. The stories depict honest, confused, and quite ordinary characters dealing with a myriad of situations, painful memories, and awkward circumstances in Black America. They are simply doing their best to find their way in the world they didn't create. I loved that the underlying themes carried in each story seemed to emulate a timeless and universal vibe.

A few of my favorite stories are:

Shades, where a young teenaged boy meets his father for the first time and questions his feelings for the man who abandoned him on the night of his conception. The man has direct discourse with the boy and fails to recognize his child, leaving the boy to deal with feelings of hate, resentment, and unconditional love.

In the title story, I Know Somebody in Staunton, a black man who has been schooled all his life by an elderly uncle about the beatings and lynchings surrounding black male/white female encounters decides to live dangerously and pick up a white woman hitchhiker in a bar on his way south to visit the ailing uncle. As they journey further south and encounter a group of angry, restless white men, the haunting refrains of his uncle's warnings weigh on him and seem to grow stronger as he progresses on his journey. This story is a history lesson as the author mentions infamous altercations involving Emmit Till, the Scottsboro Nine, James Byrd, and others.

More history, in the musical sense, is shared in Rossonian Days, where the author describes a jazz band's trip west to Denver to "make it big." He craftily parallels their trek with their ancestor's trials during the Middle Passage and how the voices and rhythms of jazz and blues greats of today (and he names quite a few) echo the chants and drumbeats of ancient Africa.

Although I didn't care for every short story presented (some touched me more than others), I liked Lewis's overall writing style and his compassionate views. He has great writing skills and a wonderful insight into the human psyche, heart, and soul.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
Nubian Circle Book Club

Mr. Lewis takes the reader into the life of each protagonist and doesn't let go until the end of the book. The reader will feel as if they have entered the story looking over the shoulder of the characters. Book clubs should put this on their must read list. Oprah? Are you listening?

William Henry Lewis has great style. All of the short stories in this collection were not great, but his style and ability to bring to life characters you can easily identify with makes it worth the read. Shades, In The Swamp, Urban Renewal, and Crusade were my favorite stories in this collection. He is masterfully creative. He makes you "feel" the charaters.

There's little doubt in my mind that Lewis is an exceptional talent, but his weakness is that he can't seem to escape some of the basic trappings of the growing "ghetto" literature movement. Absentee fathers, promiscuous teens, and oversexed men tend to dominate even his best stories. While there are no pimps or hos, these characters still feel too formulaic.

Of course, his best story is the title story. It is realistic, vivid, and doesn't rely on stereotypes to propel the story forward (or worse -- to hinge the plot on!). Other stories, such as "Kudzu," start off strong but soon lose their way, and Lewis relies almost exclusively on his descriptive abilities to plow through to the end. Unfortunately, most of the stories are like "Kudzu."

Writers are often told to "write what they know," and Lewis may be making candid observations of the world that he lives in or grew up in, but it has gotten to the point where African Americans need storytellers that can create a realistic world that doesn't exploit the stereotypical minority. Other authors, such as Nikki Giovanni or Toni Morrison, have walked the fine line of embracing realistic characters while giving them the depth to make them stand apart. Lewis isn't there yet, and that's what makes "Staunton" such a frustrating read. You wish that he were.