Finding Someplace by Denise Lewis Patrick

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Shocking, informative and powerful, this volume offers spectacular literary snapshots of black history and culture (Short stories. Shocking, informative and powerful, this volume offers spectacular literary snapshots of black history and culture. The plots and characters change from one story to the next, but each one artfully tells a poignant truth without flinching. She loses her job and nearly loses her life by placing her faith in “Beauty Queen Complexion Clarifier…guaranteed to brighten, lighten and heighten your natural beauty!” As the visage of the “ideal Colored woman” floats through this tale, it illuminates the multifaceted sources of self-hatred and enmity within black families around skin color. Living in the shadow of Clotille and her five fair-skinned sisters, Hazel believes that blackness will impede her upward social mobility. In one story, “Colorstruck,” Hazel absorbs everything Miss Clotille, her light-skinned, middle-class Negro employer, has taught her: how to say etiquette instead of manners and teal and magenta instead of green and purple, and to wear shoes in public.

The youthful characters possess passion and purpose, even if they remain misguided or too proud to live safely within their historically situated habitats. Patrick’s tales from the distant and not-so-distant past shed fresh light on interracial and intraracial conflicts that shape and often distort the realities of African-Americans. Eight short stories with long memory cut to the quick-all the more as they could be true.

Finding Someplace by Denise Lewis Patrick