#193 A Taste of Honey- Jabari Asim
We get to the title story of this great collection. Although not
a novel, these stories are all connected through its cast of characters, mostly
the youngest boy of the family, Crispus. This story is about the oldest son in the
family, Ed. Ed is a high school senior and the most socially evolved of the
family. He has taken an interest with everything involving the revolution and black power
movements, although like most young people finding sudden identity in a cause,
it was a hard road to navigate at first.
“All his life Ed has been taught that black folks had to be
twice as good to be considered half as good. Now some people—well, a lot of
people—were saying that we shouldn’t measure ourselves by white folks’ low
standards. They were saying that folks who use dogs and fire-hoses and billy-clubs
and broomsticks wrapped in barbed wire and homemade bombs to hurt defenseless
little children don’t know the first thing about good. As comforting and
wonderful as this new blackness was, it was also confusing.”
Ed is meditating on these important issues, and whether to
go to Harvard or a Historically Black College while still focusing on what’s
most important to a teenage boy:
“Ed had every intention of continuing to live. For him
living had been concentrated and distilled, in essence reduced to an
all-encompassing desire that warmed the air, rippled his sheets, and lightly
grazed the dark beauty stretched out on his bed.”
Notable Passage: “Isn’t a touch of class worth a taste of
honey?”
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