‘Ms. Dallas’ by Sidik Fofana

Ms. Dallas by Sidik Fofana, 2022

The magic trick:

Pulling a surprise thread at the end of the story to drive the plot’s conclusion

It’s not surprising to learn that Fofana has worked in a public school before, because the material here in “Ms. Dallas” – set in a Harlem Middle School – feels so true to life it reads almost like auto-fiction.

The thing I’d especially like to highlight here is the story’s structure. The plot doesn’t move in specific straight lines but instead builds gradually. It’s always moving in the same general direction, but it’s never a simple, obvious thing.

The growing tension finally breaks, and that it does is not surprising for the reader. We’ve been feeling this ramping up of the conflict the entire time. So it’s not a clean surprise ending. But what is very surprising – or at least was to me – is what ultimately is at the root of the tension break. The story throws so many characters and asides at us throughout, that I didn’t clock the one who turns out to be more important to the plot than I realized.

It’s not a mystery story at all, so this might sound like a strange comparison, but it’s almost like an Agatha Christie novel in the way it presents several possible threads and surprises you at the end with which one gets pulled.

And that’s quite a trick on Fofana’s part.

The selection:

They fresh out of college with a magic wand. They done read all the articles. Believed every news show that said public schools and teachers in the ghetto is fallin apart like pie crust. Watched every feel-good movie, thinkin at twenty-two they can come in here and set the world right in minutes. All the while, they bidin they time til law school. Mr. Broderick bout Swan’s age hisself. They play hangman in the teacher lounge and crack on each other’s mothers just like the students. Sooner or later, the realness of the world come crashin down on them, and then they’ll sit there wonderin whythey stuck in the middle of Harlem. But ain’t nobody surprised, Mr. Broderick. Cuz people like you run off raggedly when they smell fire.

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