Comfort by Jamel Brinkley, 2020
The magic trick:
Approximating the protagonist’s feelings of hazy, confused desolation for the reader
We’re starting a mini-series highlighting new voices in the world of short stories. I’m sure many of you will find some of these authors to not be new at all. That’s just how plugged in you are! But they were new to me, working in the last decade or so, and seem to be primed to do great things in the next few years.
We start with Jamel Brinkley today.
“Comfort” tells the story of a black woman grieving the death of her brother who died in the back of a police car under dubious circumstances four years earlier.
That premise, though, is not made clear early in the story.
The reader is thrown into the scene on page one without much context at all. The woman is waking up, trying to sort out what is what. We soon see she is living in a haze of depression. It’s disorienting for us the reader, quickly putting us in the same state of confusion as the protagonist. It’s very effective in making us uncomfortable.
And that’s quite a trick on Brinkley’s part.
The selection:
In the afternoon, Simone changes her clothes and, with a tremendous effort, goes outside for groceries. The weather is bright but very breezy. She’s unsure if it’s warmer or cooler than it’s supposed to be. At any rate, she isn’t properly dressed for the day. Her head heats up in the loose knit of her hat, her bare legs become stippled with gooseflesh. The sun pummels the back of her neck and the breeze relentlessly threatens her skirt.
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