Review
Following his Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Known World,
Jones presents a collection of fourteen short stories centered in Washington D.C
- the same location as his first book of short stories,
Lost in the City
- a place that he knows well having been born and raised there. All the
stories in
Lost in the City take place in a contemporary time frame, but
the stories in
All Aunt Hagar's Children encompass the entire 20th
century seen from a range of African-American perspectives.
Like Jones's mother, his characters mainly originate from the rural South and
are coping with the urbanization of their lives with varying degrees of
success. However, even though most have left to find a better life, many of the older people tend to long for the life they knew
when they were young - a time somewhere in the short period following the...
Beyond the Book
There is a regrettably short excerpt from
All Aunt Hagar's Children at BookBrowse, but here are links to three complete short stories,
originally published in The New Yorker:
Bad Neighbors
A Rich Man
Old Boys and Old Girls.
Did you know?
- Edward P Jones has dedicated all three of his books to his mother, Jeanette.
- The "P" stands for Paul.
