White boys

the long version

With a superb ear for the voices of his characters and a discerning eye that pierces beyond simple color coding of the skin, McKnight dramatizes the plight of the outsider. He populates these funny, disturbing, and lyrical stories with an unforgettable chorus of cultural hybrids. An American anthropologist compiling West African proverbs in Senegal; military officers, recruits, and maintenance staff; two young boys trying to navigate friendship on a Louisiana army base - all are forced to deal with questions of identity, race, relationship, and memory. Racial conflicts blur rather than darken the so-called color line. When blacks and whites come together in these stories they discover a sort of vanishing point, a white (though not Caucasian) noise that momentarily obliterates distinctions, if not differences.