Get Down
Issue #30
By Asali Solomon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 208 pages, $21)
By Kelly White
Published: December 1st, 2006 | 5:00pm
The seven stories in this collection, all set in urban and suburban parts of Philadelphia during the Reagan era, adroitly explore the social and racial dynamics of black young adults on the verge of definition. They’re at a crossroads in their lives and on a major detour from familial values, community expectations, and cultural ideologies. The characters stray in many ways: through inappropriate sexual longings, racial jealousy, and class envy.
In “Twelve Takes Thea,” 12-year-old Thea navigates the rocky social politics of junior high as one of only two black girls at her mostly white prep school. Torn between her fear of and desire for assimilating into upper-middle-class white culture, Thea rejects and ultimately betrays her only other black classmate, Frances, a smart girl who embarrasses her for being so “ghetto.” “This is you,” the girl tells Thea, holding up an Oreo as a visual aid.
“William is Telling a Story” is another piece that posits the title character against an uncomfortable situation. William Stuart sleeps with a white woman as a way to feel closer to his male lover Kelly, who “had fucked several white girls before college, and he said you could get them to do anything.” In one poignant moment after this conquest, William “has a quick, sad fantasy of comparing notes with Kelly.”
With surprising and outrageous observations, Asali Solomon examines how we make choices about our identity against the larger social consciousness of family and community. Get Down is a collection of superbly nuanced psychological portraits about what it means to be black, what it means to be an individual, and what happens when those two categories are mutually exclusive.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more