The Kind Of Light That Shines On Texas by Reginald McKnight, 1992
The magic trick:
Driving the plot with one main conflict, but building the story’s theme around another one entirely
I have to admit, I wasn’t taken with this story after the first page or so. It felt a little bit cookie-cutter, a little meandering. But I was wrong. It is unique, complicated and powerful.
In some ways, it’s a simple boy-confronts-his-bully-school-days memory tale. But it’s much more. Our narrator is one of just three African-American students in an otherwise-white Texas classroom. He has more to worry about than the threats of the class bully, even while that does take center stage in the plot.
Concurrently, he is navigating all kinds of race-based complications, from his teacher’s racist jokes to an internal pressure to set himself apart from the other black students in the class. And there’s more. His father is off fighting in Vietnam, so he’s figuring out what his role is at home, wanting to be the “man of the house” but flailing in his attempts.
And like any good story, the conflicts and complications taken as a whole are far richer than the sum of their parts, when listed here. The crazy thing, then, is that by the end the narrator (and reader) realizes that the main conflict had nothing to do with the bully at all.
And that’s quite a trick on McKnight’s part.
The selection:
“Does it make you ashamed to be colored?”
“No,” I said, but I meant yes. Yes, if you insist on thinking us all the same. Yes, if his faults are mine, his weaknesses inherent in me.
“I’d be,” said Jack.
I made no reply. I was ashamed. Ashamed for not defending Marvin and ashamed that Marvin even existed. But if it had occurred to me, I would have asked Jack whether he was ashamed of being white because of Oakley.
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