A Companion to the American Short Story

by Alfred Bendixen

  was reissued to include “ Bright and Morning Star ” and the autobiographical introduc-

  tory essay “ The Ethics of Living Jim Crow. ” Though this collection, and to a greater

  extent his now classic novel Native Son (1940) and autobiography Black Boy (1945),

  mark Richard Wright as a quintessential proletariat and black protest writer of the

  1940s, he was to come out with another powerful collection of stories in 1961, Eight

  Men . Several of the stories are based on earlier publications, most notably “ The Man

  Who Was Almost a Man, ” which has the same plot but a less mature protagonist

  than his earlier prize - winning story. Because of the dedicated efforts of the African

  American literary community, black writers were the strongest collective voice to

  challenge American prejudice and complacency regarding racial and ethnic issues in

  the period between the wars.

  The concerns of the age were also refl ected in the tales from groups who were just

  beginning to tell the tales of their communities. One of the most popular stories of

  the day was the hard - hitting “ Christ in Concrete ” by Italian American writer Pietro

  di Donato. The story, based on the death of his father at a construction site, was

  expanded into a book of the same title that gained national attention in 1939. Another

  writer to receive recognition was Jos é Garcia Villa. Though known primarily for his

  poetry, two stories, “ Untitled Story ” and “ The Fence, ” were selected as Best American

  Short Stories in 1932 and 1933. Villa was born in the Philippines, and after winning

  a prize there for his writing, came to America, where he lived for over forty years,

  though he never became an American citizen. The two narratives refl ect the transcul-

  tural nature of the multiethnic short story tradition as the former, a modern story of

  assimilation in an American academic setting, differs greatly from the latter tale set

  in a village in the Philippines.

  The decades following World War II were a time of rapid changes in American

  society and the world marked by the growth of the middle class, the unprecedented

  power of the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of feminism, the Vietnam War, and

  the countercultural revolution it spawned. The catastrophic events of World War II,

  and most signifi cantly the attempted genocide of Jews in Europe, led to a new inte-

  riority in the American short story. In fact Jewish American authors dominated the

  The Multiethnic Story

  473

  tradition during this period as writers, most notably Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud,

  Philip Roth, Tillie Olsen, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick,

  published volumes of short stories that both question humanity and reaffi rm the

  existence of Jews worldwide. The power and popularity of their work is evident in

  the national and international recognition they received. Over their careers this group

  has been selected as Best American Short Story and O. Henry Prize winners over two

  dozen times. In 1959 The Magic Barrel by Malamud won the National Book Award,

  as did Goodbye, Columbus by Roth the following year. Bellow was awarded the Nobel

  Prize in Literature in 1976. Singer won in 1978 – the only American to win who

  wrote in a language other than English, and the only Yiddish writer ever to win.

  Bellow, Malamud, Roth, and Singer began publishing short stories in the 1950s,

  Olsen and Paley in the 1960s, and Ozick in the 1970s, and all continued to write for

  decades. Throughout their careers they followed the consciousness of Jews in the

  Diaspora. Singer, who emigrated from Poland to America as an adult, wrote most

  often of the restrictions and values of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and of the immi-

  gration experience. The others, all children of Russian immigrants (with the exception

  of Roth, who was third - generation), expressed the complicated existence of Jews in

  America negotiating the uneven assimilation process, the everyday tensions of families

  where generations have had vastly different lives, and the profound ambivalence many

  experienced living as Jews in America as millions died in the Holocaust overseas.

  Tillie Olsen ’ s “ Tell Me a Riddle ” (1961) encompasses all these themes through the

  stark internal struggles of an elderly Jewish couple in the days leading up to the wife ’ s

  death. The riddle, the problem for these characters, is: how is it possible to reconcile

  the idealism of youth and the persecution that results, the memory of poverty, the

  tragedy of history, the distance that separates families, and the inescapable solitude

  of existence with the undeniable presence of love, strength, and continuance? The

  questioning by Jewish American writers of this period ranges from Saul Bellow ’ s

  “ Looking for Mr. Green ” (1951), in which the protagonist asks, “ Why is the consent

  given to misery? ” to Cynthia Ozick ’ s much anthologized “ The Shawl ” (1980) that

  unblinkingly portrays the agonizing life and horrifying death of a baby in a concen-

  tration camp under the inhumanity of the Nazis, which leaves the reader to ask the

  eternal question, “ why? ”

  As it had from its roots in the late nineteenth century, the tradition of African

  American short story writing continued during this period to express the most pro-

  found concerns of a rich and diverse culture. In 1971 Ann Petry became the fi rst

  African American woman to publish a volume of short stories when her writings of

  the previous three decades were collected in Miss Muriel and Other Stories . Early tales,

  such as “ Like a Winding Sheet, ” fi rst published in The Crisis in 1945, refl ect the dual

  pressures of racism and economic stress that refl ect the main concerns of ethnic Ameri-

  can writers of the generation before. Going to Meet the Man (1965) by James Baldwin,

  on the other hand, is a stunning offering that charts the contemporary intersections

  of Southern black history and urban black life and the inheritances of culture and

  history that both unite and divide the individual and community. Two stories from

  474

  Molly Crumpton Winter

  this collection that thread African American musical traditions into complex stories

  of love and regret are “ Sonny ’ s Blues ” and “ Going to Meet the Man. ” The former story

  traces the relationship of two brothers and their shared and divergent knowledge of

  suffering. As the story opens, the narrator, a high school math teacher, refl ects on

  their lives through that of his students: “ These boys, now, were living as we ’ d been

  living then, they were growing up in a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against

  the low ceiling of their actual possibilities ” (104). The story navigates the darkness

  of life that comes through personal sorrow as well as the oppression experienced as an

  African American in a racist society. Reprieve from the darkness, however tenuous,

  comes through family, forgiveness, and the cultural inheritance of music, in this case

  the blues, that the younger brother helps his sibling understand. The music that

  permeates “ Going to Meet the Man ” is the protest songs of the Civil Rights Move-

  ment, which were based on the familiar spirituals of black Christian life. Jesse, the

  main character in this story, is a white d
eputy sheriff in the South desperately cling-

  ing to ingrained notions of racial superiority even as social change is chipping away

  at Southern white apartheid. Through his depiction of a lynching Jesse witnesses as

  a child, where he is bonded to his parents through bloodshed and racism, Baldwin

  delineates the process of hate that is psychologically damaging to the oppressor as

  well as the oppressed. Together, Baldwin ’ s collection gives witness to the injustice of

  society even as it acknowledges the fragility and potential for good inherent in all

  people.

  Another particularly strong voice of the era was James Alan McPherson, whose

  stories appeared in over two dozen periodicals. He also published two critically

  claimed collections

  Hue and Cry (1968) and Elbow Room

  (1977)

  , which won the

  Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1978. Through a wide - ranging diversity of characters,

  from “ Old School ” waiters in railway dining cars ( “ A Solo Song: For Doc ” ), to an

  aspiring writer and “ apprentice janitor ” ( “ Gold Coast ” ), to a cosmopolitan New

  Yorker with South Carolina roots ( “ Why I Like Country Music ” ), to a young African

  American couple in London ( “ I Am an American ” ), McPherson captures the cross -

  sections of black American life as it is lived in a multicultural world.

  A similar range of characters and settings is found in the works of Toni Cade

  Bambara and Alice Walker, though their short story collections more specifi cally

  refl ect the power of the black feminist perspective. In Bambara ’ s popular story “ The

  Lesson ” from Gorilla, My Love (1972) , the tough and insightful young Sylvia is com-

  pelled to face the reality that in the economic hierarchy of society she and her friends

  are of the lower class, a revelation that she faces with the stern resolve that “ ain ’ t

  nobody gonna beat me at nuthin ” (96). Walker captures the evolving sensibilities of

  women in the 1970s in her two collections In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women

  (1973) and You Can ’ t Keep a Good Woman Down (1981) . “ The Abortion, ” which was

  selected as an O. Henry Prize winner in 1981, records the complications of life for

  women, particularly for a woman of color, in the this decade of change.

  In the early 1970s, apparently inspired by Black Nationalist sentiments, Frank

  Chin, Jeffery Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong published the groundbreaking

  The Multiethnic Story

  475

  Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian - American Writers (1974) . The editors included works

  by Chinese American, Japanese American, and Filipino American writers and made

  a case for a new literary tradition that is distinct from both mainstream America and

  from the nations of ethnic origin. The text revitalized interest in writers who were in

  danger of being forgotten, such as Toshio Mori, who wrote a collection of short stories

  about Japanese American life set before World War II entitled Yokohama, California

  (1949) , and Hisaye Yamamoto, who had been publishing short stories in Japanese

  American periodicals and national literary journals for twenty fi ve years. Her stories,

  which were fi nally collected in Seventeen Syllables in 1988 , trace Japanese American

  life from prewar farming communities, through the World War II internment camp

  experience, to the feminist movement of the 1970s.

  The cultural revolutions of the 1970s gave rise to the development of ethnic studies

  in universities across the United States. The new interest in the diverse histories and

  cultures that make up the nation, along with an increasing number of ethnic Ameri-

  cans and women entering into academia, led to the heated debates of the “ canon wars ”

  in the 1980s. The power and quality of contemporary multiethnic writing, combined

  with research and theory that resulted in recovery of countless early texts and new

  ways of reading works from different ethnic literary traditions, proved the study of

  multiethnic American literature to be a valuable and limitless discipline, and one that

  is crucial in understanding our national makeup. The 1980s to the present has been

  a time of amazing expansion for ethnic American short story writing. Not only are

  there more stories being published, but also collections are broadening the limits of

  genre, and stories and authors refl ect a growing variety of cultural origins.

  Building on the promise of the generation before, Asian American short story

  writers have achieved unparalleled success in the last twenty - fi ve years. The wide range

  of ethnic origins of the authors refl ects changing immigration patterns and increased

  globalization. Examples of Chinese American literature, for example, range from the

  stories of second - generation writer Gish Jen in Who ’ s Irish? (1999) , whose Chinese

  American characters have integrated into American society; to the stories of Ha Jin,

  who immigrated as an adult to America and whose stories in The Bridegroom (2000)

  are set in present - day China; to the international stories of British - born Peter Ho

  Davies, of Welsh and Chinese background, whose tales in The Ugliest House in the

  World (1997) are set primarily in the UK and Southeast Asia and feature British and

  Chinese characters. Writers such as Gish Jen and David Wong Louie present the

  perspective of American children of Chinese descent who are mostly at ease with their

  assimilation but who still possess a keen awareness of critical moments when others

  question their or their parents ’ belonging, as in Jen ’ s much - anthologized “ In the

  American Society, ” when a Chinese American father triumphs over the bigotry of a

  white Anglo - Saxon character, who in many ways represents the complacent assump-

  tion of superiority of a certain American type that has changed little in the past

  hundred years.

  Japanese American short stories of this period also refl ect the generations of families

  that have lived in America, and for many writers the internment experience of World

  476

  Molly Crumpton Winter

  War II stands as a pivotal event in their histories and in the formation of their identi-

  ties, as in the stories included in Desert Run: Poems and Stories (1988) by Mitsuye

  Yamada. In Talking to the Dead (1992) , on the other hand, Sylvia Watanabe represents

  not a single ethnic perspective but the Asian fusion of her home state Hawaii, where

  Japanese Americans were not subjected to internment. Another Pacifi c Rim perspec-

  tive comes from Mary Yukari Waters, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother

  and Irish American father and who moved to America at age 9. All of her stories in

  The Laws of Evening (2004) are set in Japan.

  Another representative of the international nature of the American short story is

  Arresting God in Kathmandu (2001) by Samrat Upadhyay. Though most of the stories

  are set in Nepal, the presence of an American ex - wife in one story and the meeting

  of Nepali lovers at a wedding in New Jersey in another reveal the globalized modern

  world. In fact, the back and forth nature of much of contemporary Asian American

  literature represents modern immigration realities where lives are lived not discon-

  nected from the nation of origin, but in continual crossings fr
om one culture to

  another. In Hunger (1998) , Lan Samantha Chang represents the perspective of both

  Chinese immigrants and their children. Indian American writers Bharati Mukherjee,

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Jhumpa Lahiri move freely between India and

  America in their short story collections. Southeast Asian American short stories have

  been selected two dozen times as Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize

  winners, and Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for

  Fiction in 2000 – evidence that a strong new tradition is developing in American

  literature. The back and forth nature of most contemporary Asian American short

  stories refl ects the personal and national histories that people bring with them to the

  United States, the special concerns of disparate groups when they arrive, and the

  borderless experiences of the life of the mind and the heart with which each human,

  regardless of background, must privately wrestle.

  Short stories by Native American writers have also garnered national attention in

  the past couple of decades as two artists, Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich, have

  had several books become best - sellers. Alexie ’ s fi rst collection, The Lone Ranger and

  Tonto Fistfi ght in Heaven

  (1993)

  , carefully balances hope and despair, humor and

  pathos, as it depicts the lives of contemporary Spokane/Coeur d ’ Alene Indians on the

  reservation and in relation to contemporary American life. Each story ends in a fragile

  moment, teetering on the brink of history, failure, forgiveness, and redemption. The

  presence of love, music, memory, and traditions promises continuance, though, as

  Junior says at the end of “ A Good Story, ” “ there is just barely enough goodness in all

  of this ” (144). Alexie maintains this balance as he follows Native American characters

  into the city, college, interracial relationships, and in conditions from homelessness

  to professional life, in his next two collections The Toughest Indian in the World (2000)

  and Ten Little Indians (2003) . Erdrich ’ s stories reach farther back into the historical

  past as she traces the lives of Ojibwa characters on one reservation and their neighbors