Summary

“Rope-Skipping Girl – Gualtiero Agnello, August 2009.” In first-person, present-tense narration, Gualtiero Agnello describes his conversation with a freelance arts writer about the life, career, and mysterious death of young black artist Josephus Jones. He recalls the arrival of Jones, messy from work, with a box of his paintings at a gallery showing primarily attended by wealthy white people, who seemed uneasy with his presence; describes their conversation, in which Jones invited him to look at his paintings; and how, a few days later, he actually did, and was struck by their untrained but unmistakable quality. He found Jones at work, where Jones describes how he started painting – wanting to preserve an image from a dream. As Agnello prepares to describe the rest of their conversation, he describes how his memories took him into “a trancelike state” (8), similar to what happens when he is painting.

Narration...