Free and Other Stories

By Anika Nailah

In spare, elegant stories reminiscent of the writings of Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West, Anika Nailah illuminates the emotional, spiritual, and social realities that shape–and sometimes... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385502931
• ISBN13: 9780385502931
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Honest and Surprising

Enjoyable stories. They seem simple to some degree, but that's misleading. They're actually very thoughtful character studies. There's one about an old couple that just about had me in tears. I'm not even sure exactly why, but the author clearly touched on something about enduring love and the fear of being alone that sent shivers through me. If you like honest writing without the pretension of literary fiction but with the kind of wisdom all writers aspire to then check out this collection.

Thought-provoking, straight-forward, and stylish,

"ARE WE BORN FREE?"Thought-provoking, straight-forward, and stylish, three words that describe the debut short story collection, "Free" by Anika Nailah (release date: 2/2002). "Free" is an appropriate Black History month release as it encapsulates the history of African-Americans in short story form. The "voices" in the stories engage you like friends or family members and resonate with a "trueness" that makes the stories all the more potent. Not only do the stories in "Free" seem as durable as those passed on in the African-American oral tradition, these stories ring with universality, making "Free" a retrospective of the "human struggle." And by examples, it leads the reader on a journey towards his/her personal definition of and search for freedom.Rousseau said, "Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains." When reading the stories in "Free," this quote immediately sprung to mind. But, are we born free? Or, are we as Anika suggests, people who are born in "prisons" and/or are imprisoned by the ones we create?As you flow through this collection of stories, which includes the following, you are challenged to explore the reactions of various individuals to their "prisons." What you will find is a cornucopia of experiences, which are as common as they are powerful.The first story is "Trudy," which revolves around a store clerk and a customer in Massachusetts. Taking place in a time right after integration, Trudy is imprisoned by time, race, fear and anger and then is imprison by her "station" in life.Position and race rear their head again in the story, "The Ride," which deals with one man's taxicab ride to the airport. On the literal journey, the man is forced to confront his "prisons" of bigotry and social class bias as he learns to like and respect people he ordinarily would not have.An actual prison is the subject of the story, "The Visit," which deals with one family's struggle with a mother behind bars. "The Visit" is a moving depiction of the effects of incarceration on an individual, a family and a spirit. It also demonstrates how the lack of forgiveness can divide people."Deanna" deals with the prisons of the mind, when a young lady confronts how she is prisoner to vanity and a life of fantasy. Commonly discussed in the press these days, this woman must face her vision of herself juxtaposed with the prevailing images of the beauty in the media.But what happens when a woman or an African-American cannot combat the pervasive images of beauty as depicted in videos, magazine and television. "French" tells the story of a light-skinned African-American woman's self-hatred and denial as the painful topic of skin color in the black community is broached. An often and much debated topic, "French" aptly points out the "prisons" of interrace racism and cultural denial.After all of the dramatic tales, in "Free," resolution comes in the final story in the book. Appropriately titled, "Free," the main character is confronted with the dea