I Know Some Things: Stories About Childhood by Contemporary Writers - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571198023 ISBN 13: 9780571198023

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1993

Synopsis

Now back in print, a dazzling collection of stories about childhood from such writers as Jamaica Kincaid and Amy Tan.

"When writers of fiction have made the effort to explore the mottled landscape of a child's secrets and understanding, they have often created stories of ferocious poignancy," Lorrie Moore writes in her Introduction to this exceptional collection of stories, in which the contradictions and hypocrisies of the adult world are seen through the eyes of children. In this collection of tales by some of today's best writers, including Margaret Atwood, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Baxter, Spalding Gray, Susan Minot, and Alice Munro, each story is told by a child character or by the adult who was that child, skillfully preserving the child's voice and role as both an actor and a witness in the drama.

Chosen by the acclaimed writer Lorrie Moore for their insight and literary brilliance, these stories range across age, gender, class, ethnicity, and geography. They will resonate with readers as they convey not only individual stories of heartache and joy but also universal themes of growing up and coming to see, if not understand, the world in a new and different way.

About this title

About the Author:

Lorrie Moore is the author of Birds of America, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times bestseller. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

From Publishers Weekly:

These marvelous, fiercely articulate stories liberate the buried child lurking in every adult. Each of the 20 tales is narrated by a youngster or by a grown-up looking back with rueful hindsight. Emotional complexity is the keynote. In Margaret Atwood's "Betty," a girl identifies with a "nice" woman neighbor but later rejects her as a role model when the facade of her perfect marriage crumbles. In Spalding Gray's funny, freewheeling "Sex and Death to the Age 14,"title ok an irrepressible boy growing up in a Christian Science household explores his budding sexuality. The rebellious, pot-smoking heroine of Sheila Schwartz's "Out-of-the-Body Travel"ok must come to terms with her father's desertion and her embittered mother's mental collapse. Amy Tan, Susan Minot, Jamaica Kincaid, Peter Meinke, Leonard Michaels, Harold Brodkey and Alice Munro, among others, explore such issues as divorce, absentee fathers, the immigrant experience, insomnia and a boy's awakening to his homosexuality. These unforgettable, immediate stories reveal how children continually revise their road map of the fearsome, beckoning adult world.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0571198023
• ISBN 13: 9780571198023
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Lorrie Moore