#506 Young Lions- Edward P. Jones

#506 Young Lions- Edward P. Jones

OK, right off the bat, I need to lay out a disclaimer. I was distracted in this story by the prevalence of a word that I cannot tolerate. The narrator kept referring to another character as “The Retarded Girl” sometimes five or ten times a page. It was distracting to a point it over-shadowed everything else for me.

I understand that to create a mood or to highlight a bias in the story, or an unfavorable characteristic of a character’s…well, character, that slurs and socially unacceptable monikers are often used. But, I personally couldn’t get past it in this story. The problem I think was that the story was written in the 3^rd person. So, every instance that the unfortunate slur was used, I didn’t hear it as coming from the character, but from the author, himself. A character’s language should never be softened no matter how offensive, as long as it’s within their personality. But a third person narration—at least for me—is different.

I’m sure some will think I’m being too sensitive, and maybe I am. There are several others stories from the past 500 or so that had very offensive language or subject matter and I barely made mention of them. I’m not trying to “pan” this story, just mention why I didn’t like it personally.

Because I acknowledge that my biases against that word effected my enjoyment of the story, I cannot honestly judge the quality of it, so I will not set a rating on this one. Sorry about that.

Notable Passage: “There were some things that God would not tolerate, and stealing flowers for the dead was one of them.”