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THE KIND OF LIGHT THAT SHINES ON TEXAS: Stories by Reginald McKnight

THE KIND OF LIGHT THAT SHINES ON TEXAS: Stories

By

Pub Date: Feb. 4th, 1992
ISBN: 0870744143
Publisher: "Little, Brown"

Evocative stories about the middle class, mostly African-American and male, in search of themselves, from McKnight (I Get on the Bus, 1990; Moustapha's Eclipse, 1988). In settings ranging from a mythic past, with a detour through hell to a totalitarian and divided US of the future, McKnight's characters, consistently sensitive and serious, try to survive in a world where both men and women must be approached with wariness, racism is endemic, and love is at best equivocal. A brilliant and talented young man, rejected by the woman he loves, flees to an Atlantis-like continent where he writes his great life's work--but in the process also realizes that he has forgotten the name of his beloved (""The Homunculus: A Novel in One Chapter""). In the O. Henry Award-winning title story, a young middle-class black boy, whose father, a professional soldier, is serving in Vietnam, must confront his feelings about his racial identity when a despised fellow black classmate rescues him from a bully. In other notable pieces: a sensitive and shy young man, devastated by his mother's death, overdoses on drugs and lands in Hell, where he must be the endless life of a party (""Roscoe in Hell""); a grandmother, watching her daughter violently beat her misbehaving grandson, realizes that the ""sickening hissing fire she heard"" went right back through herself to the ""generations of slaves and slave-keeper"" (""Into Night""); and another young man, once in the army, remembers in ""Peacetime"" ""a pretty weird time"" with friends, now dead, who almost deserved a war--""to give these guys something to do."" Some stories work better than others, but McKnight--to his credit--tries to find a distinctive voice, neither macho nor maudlin, as he explores the big three: race, class, and gender. A writer to watch.