#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

A chef is among 100 prisoners, chained together, being marched through town. He was caught giving aid to rebels, although all he did was feed people who sat at his table. He was after all, a chef. Somehow he escapes his binding, but that leaves the chain, one man short. The guards arrest the nearest man, a professor, strip him of his briefcase, and clothes and add him unjustly to the prison ranks.

The chef, after all the prisoners leave, picks up the professors briefcase and creates a new life in exile. He spends his time reading the professors papers on the nature of the universe. For months, he eats, sleeps and ruminates philosophically on existence:

“The light of my cigarette is a fire like the sun. From where I sit, all the universe is equidistant from my cigarette. Ergo, my cigarette is the center of the universe. My cigarette is on earth. Ergo, the earth is the center of the universe. If all heavenly bodies move, they must therefore move in relation to the earth, and in relation to my cigarette.”

Of course, not having any training in physics or science, his theories about the cosmos were all wrong, but it didn’t matter, did it? The war had flipped the world upside-down and…“The universe has been folded inside out.”

When you literally can no longer be yourself, who are you? Where are you? Why are we here?

Notable Passage: “History was safer than the news, because there was no question of how it would end.”

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 34

#285 The Tale of Almost- David Dante Troutt

#285 The Tale of Almost- David Dante Troutt

Will Kelly was born a black slave, but with a blemish, a white birth mark appeared under one arm. They called the affliction mulitis. As the civil war ended, and reconstruction was underway, Will’s “condition” spread. White marks were making rings were showing up all over his body.

This cause all sorts of scorn: “Will Kelly was no better than a mule, a beast with blood between the races who’d drown one day forever more.”

It not only effected the way the public viewed him, but cause himself alarm, although his self-identity never waivered: “His neck was half white, and he was pale behind the ears. The colony of cream had not yet reached his face, nor his loins, nor his heart.”

During this time, there were several black leaders looking to him for help, and using his skin color as a cause, but to most a black man was a black man no matter the tone: “So, black men hung from trees, and high yellow burned like the darker variety.”

Soon, his identity was questioned by all parts of society.

Rating: 7-8-6-8 Total=29

#270 The Southside Raza Image Federation Corps of Discovery- Luis Alberto Urrea

#270 The Southside Raza Image Federation Corps of Discovery- Luis Alberto Urrea

Identity has been a theme in many of these stories, this one especially. Junior is a skinny, brainy kid that hides his books from the other kids so he won’t get beat-up. Shadow Garcia is a bit older, much bigger and Junior’s friend He’s a happy-go-lucky tough guy.

The pair explore the California/Mexio border with a stolen canoe before the border control picks them up. Until then, Shadow thought he was an American, a Chicano, a Dodger’s fan. As it turns out, his parents snuck him across the border when he was little from Tijuana, and never told him. Sometimes you’re not even who you think you are.

“You a vato or a gabacho? Because…you got to be something. If you ain’t something, you’re nothing. That’s a fact.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

Entertaining God encapsulates many of the themes found in Walker’s collection In Love & Trouble. Mostly it talks about identity; finding it, keeping it, understanding it, and mostly falling to false truths. This falseness is found on the deepest levels and in the most shallow of places:

“He has married his first wife in a gigantic two-ring ceremony, in a church, and his wife had had the wedding pictures touched up so that he did not resemble himself. In the pictures his skin was black and olive brown and smooth when in fact it was black and stubbly and rough. He had married his wife because she was light and loose and fun and because she had long red hair. After they were married she stopped dyeing it and let it grow out black…well, she was just no longer anyone he recognized.”

Like many characters that Walker writes about, finding identity often leads them to radical politics and the Nation of Islam:

“He too changed his name and took an X. He was not comfortable with the X, however, because he began to feel each morning that the day before he had not existed. He knew what it was, of course; without a last name John would never be able to find him.”

Religion permeates the search for identity, truth, and self, but as expected, finding these things are hard battles ending in false shadows or at best small fleeting victories.

“…one of the millions who needed the truth their religion could bring. He had finally accepted himself, but it seemed that in the moment the beauty of this acceptance was most clear he must say goodbye to it.”

This search is a lonely crusade, a singular path. To go this route one must leave the past where it is, and go through that door alone:

“Softly, she would call to him…and through he never answered her, he would amble down…and stand waiting…He would wait for her to wipe her eyes. Then he would go with her as far as the door.”

Notable Passage: “The very air seemed alive. It was like singing or flying and the boy felt exhilarated. He stretched his hands above his head as high as they would go as he greeted the sun, which rose in slow distant majesty across a misty sky, nudging clouds gently as it made its way.”

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35