MR. RODNEY PAUL WILLIAMS' A SHORT STORY SERIES 1

Williams’ compact short-story collection focuses on violence in America.

In the first chapter of the opening tale, “I Ain’t Fraid of No Ghosts,” police in New Mexico question Jolene Hopscotch for her role in a violent attack. Several masked students beat an elderly transient in the subway, but only Jolene was identified as one of the perpetrators. Her father and siblings are taken aback—but a greater shock awaits them. The subsequent three chapters take an even grimmer tone. One begins with the meeting of the “most powerful wives” of five white supremacist groups; they want to do something about the white president of the United States, whom they blame for tragic military deaths, but they want to ensure that the vice president, a Black woman, doesn’t then become the country’s leader. Later short stories deal with revenge. In the third chapter of “Prevert—Part I,” titled “Cover Up,” a woman who was sexually assaulted while incarcerated may be targeting those responsible. Another prisoner in the book’s last entry, “What Glass Ceiling?,” escapes confinement to track down the people who killed his son. Williams’ uncompromising collection tackles racism, misogyny, and sexual violence, among other difficult topics. The characters are memorable, even in brief appearances, such as an actor’s wife who’s a “certified super genius.” Some highly graphic content is hard to get through, including scenes involving the sexual abuse of animals. In addition, the collection contains many errors. The Hopscotch family, for example, appear in the same narrative as the white supremacists; then a 14-page section of that story is repeated verbatim in “5 Southern Belles.” Numerous misspellings, typographical errors, and odd wordings crop up, as in this repeated, confusing passage: “The Chief of Unsolved Cases Divion, Two star, General Cold, Case sat at home his legs crossed just above the thin as tooth pick sized ankels and on the Ashati Stool hassack sized lighted the flat of his palm on the enormous volumned buttocks of Linda Melicia Benedict Cold, his, you can use another cold one smiling spouse.”

A forbidding and unsparing set of stories that suffer greatly from subpar presentation.