Uncomfortable yet necessary are bywords for this story about race, according to reviewer Mary Silver. (amazon.com)
In Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, “them” are beginning to gentrify the old neighborhood. A white couple buys the house next door to Barlowe, a good, likable man who does not want to let himself yearn for anything. He remembers that his father’s yearnings made him vulnerable. Yet he makes friends with the wife against his better judgment. He develops a dream of home ownership.
So many wrong notes are sounded by them as the street changes. The formerly useful hole in the wall store becomes Cafe Latte. The blond dreadlocked owner approaches the elders to take an order: “’Can I get you boys anything?’
“The men looked at each other. They had grown so close they sometimes registered the same thoughts, and at the exact same time: Boys? Boys?
“What can this boy get us in a place like this? A place that ain’t got no soda crackers and sardines stuffed along the aisles; a place that ain’t got no beer and wine in the back; no Vienna sausages on aisle two, or pig ear sandwiches, sold up front.”
Tensions build and build and inner fears and hopes bear fruit. So read it whether you are Them or Us. It’s better than a pig ear sandwich or a cappuccino.
Them by Nathan McCall (2008) is published by Washington Square Press and is available at amazon.com.
