Point of View

The short stories in the collection vary in narrative voice, with some being told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, and some from the perspective of a third person limited narrator. The third person narrators are confined to the points-of-view of the stories' main protagonists; the reader sees the events through their eyes and is given access to their thoughts and feelings.

In “The Finkelstein 5,” the third person narrator provides the perspective of Emmanuel, a young man responding with anger and disgust to the acquittal of George Wilson Dunn in the murders of five black youths outside of a public library. Emmanuel's perspective is unique for many reasons, but one of the most compelling aspects of this story is his racial self-awareness. Emmanuel describes himself on a “Blackness” (1) scale from 1-10, where the number is higher or lower based on how he is perceived...