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A review by jaymoran
A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
3.0
For most people there is a gap, for some a chasm, between the way they dream themselves and the way they are seen by others. That gap might be the truest measure of one's loneliness.
A Lucky Man looks at Black masculinity, the relationships and experiences that ground and bind them, and there is something truly special about Brinkley's writing. His prose is beautiful - not in a heavy handed, overtly flowery way but it's as light as a butterfly wing. The language and imagery he uses is just gorgeous and I can't fault it.
It has been that way with people in my life, with people I have loved: a fine dispersal, a rupture as quiet as two lips parting, a change so sudden one morning, so slight, you wonder if they had ever been beautiful at all.
Nothing happened. It all remained still. He walked around the room, sensing something invisible. But there was only a creepy sensation, like feathers all over his body.
So, why only 3 stars? Out of the 9 stories in this collection, I only truly loved 4 of them: J'ouvert, 1996, I Happy Am, Everything the Mouth Eats and Clifton's Place. The others just didn't speak to me as much, and I found some of the stories just uncomfortable. In one story, the main character is an older man who takes photographs of young women that he sees on public transport or just out and about in the city. Brinkley doesn't condemn or excuse this character, which is good writing, but the story didn't shift my initial feelings - I just remained consistently uncomfortable and I couldn't work out what Brinkley was trying to say here. I also found the way women were discussed in these stories off-putting, especially the character of Rhonda in the story Fat Rhonda. A lot of them didn't feel like people, just silhouettes who are props for their male counterparts to react to and interact with, usually in a sexual or violent way.
Overall, I loved those 4 stories intensely, especially I Happy Am, which I believe is the best and most poignant in the collection. Brinkley is a stunning writer but the other 5 stories left me feeling a bit cold.
A Lucky Man looks at Black masculinity, the relationships and experiences that ground and bind them, and there is something truly special about Brinkley's writing. His prose is beautiful - not in a heavy handed, overtly flowery way but it's as light as a butterfly wing. The language and imagery he uses is just gorgeous and I can't fault it.
It has been that way with people in my life, with people I have loved: a fine dispersal, a rupture as quiet as two lips parting, a change so sudden one morning, so slight, you wonder if they had ever been beautiful at all.
Nothing happened. It all remained still. He walked around the room, sensing something invisible. But there was only a creepy sensation, like feathers all over his body.
So, why only 3 stars? Out of the 9 stories in this collection, I only truly loved 4 of them: J'ouvert, 1996, I Happy Am, Everything the Mouth Eats and Clifton's Place. The others just didn't speak to me as much, and I found some of the stories just uncomfortable. In one story, the main character is an older man who takes photographs of young women that he sees on public transport or just out and about in the city. Brinkley doesn't condemn or excuse this character, which is good writing, but the story didn't shift my initial feelings - I just remained consistently uncomfortable and I couldn't work out what Brinkley was trying to say here. I also found the way women were discussed in these stories off-putting, especially the character of Rhonda in the story Fat Rhonda. A lot of them didn't feel like people, just silhouettes who are props for their male counterparts to react to and interact with, usually in a sexual or violent way.
Overall, I loved those 4 stories intensely, especially I Happy Am, which I believe is the best and most poignant in the collection. Brinkley is a stunning writer but the other 5 stories left me feeling a bit cold.