Description
In Georgia by Jerome Gold
ISBN: 978-1-936364-27-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-936364-28-2
Price: $13.95
Fiction
120 pages
The title story in this collection, “In Georgia: A Yankee Family in the Segregated South,” is a nuanced narrative set in north Georgia just before and after school segregation is ordered in the South. This novella focuses on a white family relocated from the North and the moral compromises they must make to live peacefully among their neighbors, and the compromises they resist making. The story, as seen through the eyes of a preadolescent boy, shows some of the effects of racial segregation and of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, on the South and on this particular family. There is the Boy Scout leader who does not want his children going to school with black children. There is the discovery by white children who have never known black people, except by reputation, of what segregation has meant to other human beings. There is the violence of white supremacists and the condoning of this violence by elected officials and the passive acceptance of it by the white churches. The stories in In Georgia show, in different contexts, how oppressors and oppressed are both prisoners of the same system.
Reviews
“‘Paul did not know then that this kind of memory does not leave you, that it may sleep for a while, for years, even decades, but it is still there, waiting to surface under provocation.’
In the eponymous novella opening this collection, readers enter the Deep South, where, to a young boy named Paul, it seems the Civil War never ended. Archaic social constructs still rule with oppressive iron and fists. As Paul first encounters the effects of racial segregation and those of Brown v. Board of Education, readers follow his confusion at the South’s social expectations. He achieves this through his careful observations of his family’s experiences of coming under attack for taking a stand for those the system oppresses. In subsequent stories detailing misguided youths in rehabilitative centers, troubled young men convicted of murder, and an environment and its creatures succumbing to humankind’s will, this collection examines and reexamines, as one narrator states, ‘the tragic condition of our species.’
In a world facing ongoing social, political, and environmental challenges, the stories in this collection could not be more relevant and thought-provoking. In brief snapshots, this book captures oppression-laden snippets of life that many fail to realize exist. Using eloquent prose, stories like ‘The Lonely Diver’ and ‘Tragedy in the Desert’ discuss the repercussions that humanity faces for disrupting and destroying the natural world. Stories like ‘Ambition’ ring with an observance, criticism, and admission reminiscent of poet Paul Celan while scrutinizing a system that challenges one of the oppressed to become the oppressor. This collection ends with the piece ‘Monday Morning in Early September,’ a humble story that questions the loss caused by the senseless violence that many face daily. Fans of fiction that engages while also provoking thought and discussion may find much to appreciate in this book.
—Nicole Yurcaba, The US Review of Books
“Jerome Gold has been in danger most of his adult life, in ways both visible and hidden. As a soldier in Vietnam and later as a rehabilitation counselor in a Washington state juvenile facility, his survival hung on luck and intelligent caution, some days in equal measure. As a writer, he seems to live with the same ratio of risk and careful craft.”
—Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, The Seattle Times
“Jerome Gold looks into the darkest corners of contemporary life, telling us without mercy exactly what he finds.”
—Judith Roche, The Stranger
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