Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories

Description

Everything Is Now brings together all the short fiction of Michelle Cliff, featuring fourteen new pieces as well as the stories from her two previous short fiction collections (Bodies of Water and The Store of a Million Items). Cliff, born in Jamaica and raised both there and in New York, skillfully weaves her own experiences into her fiction, exploring race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism. With stunning lyricism, intelligence, and passion, Cliff confronts the dualities of our complex world: black and white, America and the third world, past and present, femininity and masculinity, colonialism and revolution. Touching on such vital themes as memory, the passage of time, familial relationships, the presence of death, and the cross-influence of cultures, Michelle Cliff’s stories are broad in scope, rich in substance, and urgent in their message. Contents......Page 6 My Grandmother’s Eyes......Page 8 Everything Is Now......Page 23 Ashes, Ashes . . .......Page 30 Then As Now......Page 36 Muleskin. Honeyskin.......Page 39 Belling the Lamb......Page 43 Crocodilopolis......Page 49 Lost Nation Road......Page 60 While Underneath......Page 63 Ecce Homo......Page 73 Water Signs......Page 78 It’s All Yours......Page 83 Carnegie’s Bones......Page 89 Dream Street......Page 94 Columba......Page 104 The Ferry......Page 112 A Hanged Man......Page 124 A Woman Who Plays Trumpet Is Deported......Page 131 American Time, American Light......Page 136 Burning Bush......Page 143 Screen Memory......Page 153 Election Day 1984......Page 167 Bodies of Water......Page 176 Keeper of All Souls......Page 200 Transactions......Page 206 Monster......Page 218 Contagious Melancholia......Page 225 Down the Shore......Page 230 The Store of a Million Items......Page 233 Stan’s Speed Shop......Page 242 Wartime......Page 248 Art History......Page 256 Rubicon......Page 266 Apache Tears......Page 272 A Public Woman......Page 277