The Unforgetting Heart: An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women (1859-1993) Book

Ironically, the average of all the ratings I put on the short stories in this collection rounds to 3.142. E.L. Doctorow, in a very roundabout way, says that short story endings are a lost art, one that writers built over time but don't seem to be able to reach today. He tries to put a positive spin on it'a return to the short story's roots, freedom from golden shackles'but he doesn't try very hard.

The problem is apparent in these stories. The endings tend to come out of nowhere ("their points of entry can be quite distant from their denouements"), be far too pat ("their central problem is made quite explicit"), or simply end without any light placed on the rest of the story ("the reader discerns a nice sense of freedom").

Perhaps, in 1999, writers were afraid of any ending that might tempt the hand of fate at the fin de siècle.

The highlights, for me, are:


Brownies, by Z.Z. Packer
The Anointed, by Kathleen Hill
People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water, by Annie Proulx
The Third and Final Continent, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Blind Josef Pronek, by Aleksander Hemon
He's At the Office, by Allan Gurganus


Annie Proulx's ending is the apotheosis of not trusting the idea of an ending that highlights these stories, Allan Gurganus's the idea that the ending should simply reiterate what has gone before. Aleksander Hemon was unwilling to trust anything his story seemed to say, and belittled it in the comments as being a trivial equivocation of war in Yugoslavia to entry level jobs in the United States.

But each of those stories are good nonetheless because the authors were willing, momentarily, to provide a deeper glimpse into their characters, even if they can't abide such seriousness after seeing it on paper.