Mixed Company: Stories
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Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
In Mixed Company Jenny Shank reveals moments of grace and connection between people of her hometown, Denver, through stories that contrast the city during its oil-bust era of economic troubles and court-ordered crosstown busing for racial desegregation with the burgeoning and gentrifying city of recent years. In "Casa del Rey," a cautious pregnant woman must contend with her out-of-control and intrusive neighbor. In "Hurts," a girls' basketball team at a majority Black Denver high school clashes with a white mountain team. In "La Sexycana," a bottom-feeding journalist ventures to a dance club to confront the young Latina woman she mentored as a teenager who then cut off all contact with her. "Lightest Lights Against Darkest Darks" follows a white middle schooler bused to a majority Black school who falls under the spell of her magnetic and racially ambiguous art teacher. In "Signing for Linemen," a graduate student in medieval literature takes a job as a summer tutor for a college football team and ends up learning more than she expected about athletes, American Sign Language, and herself. In "Local Honey," middle-aged white parents bring their adopted Black teenage son to a Wu-Tang Clan concert in an attempt to bond with him. Characters find their initial perceptions and ideas overturned in these stories laced with humor, heart, and grit. Jenny Shank forges fiction out of the sparks that fly when diverse people encounter one another.
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Mixed Company by Jenny Shank is a short story collection that is the winner of the 2020 George Garrett Fiction Prize. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “In Mixed Company Jenny Shank reveals moments of grace and connection between people of her hometown, Denver, through stories that contrast the city during its oil-bust era of economic troubles and court-ordered crosstown busing for racial desegregation with the burgeoning and gentrifying city of recent years. Characters find their initial perceptions and ideas overturned in these stories laced with humor, heart, and grit. Jenny Shank forges fiction out of the sparks that fly when diverse people encounter one another.”
This is a heartfelt, and often funny, collection of excellent short stories, a worthy selection for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. These fine stories standout: “L'homme de ma vie,” “Casa del Ray,” “Sexycana,” and “Local Honey.” Many of the stories feature diverse characters trying to love each other, or eventually clash with each other. Shank is a confident writer in both first- and third-person, but the first-person narrators sound especially assured. Most of the stories unfold in Denver, Colorado, a quirky setting in Shank's hands, where these diverse characters are forced to contend with one another. Sometimes it works out; many times it doesn't. But Shank is a worthy literary tour guide of this bustling melting pot near the Rocky Mountains.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. I would give this book 5 stars.
