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Stories
by Jamel Brinkley
Book Reviewed by:Jamel Brinkley's stories reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class - where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.
In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past.
An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J'Ouvert can't help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history.
The essence of A Lucky Man can perhaps be best summed up by Brinkley's approach to the craft of writing, in an interview he gave to The San Francisco Chronicle: "I finally got to the point where I'm taking...writing seriously, so what's the rush now? What's the point of bulldozing my way?" That measured attitude leads to less histrionics but more pathos, as his mostly black, male characters grapple with the complexities of navigating everyday life in the United States where the chips are mostly stacked against them...continued
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(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).
In "Everything the Mouth Eats," one of the stories in A Lucky Man, the martial art/dance form of capoeira takes center stage.
Capoeira originated in Brazil possibly among enslaved Africans who were brought to work the land for the Portuguese overlords. The South American country was ruled by the Portuguese from 1500 to 1815 and during this time the slave trade reached Brazil as well. It is said that capoeira originated as a dance form, a means of expression among the slaves who fled to form autonomous colonies in the hinterlands, known as quilombos.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, urban migration brought the art form to major city centers yet for decades capoeira was perceived as an outlawed practice. 
Recognition and ...
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