McKnight, Reginald

Pittsburgh. 1988. University Of Pittsburgh Press. 1st Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket W/A Small Tear On The Top Front Of The Dustjacket. 0822935899. 131 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Gary Gore. keywords: Literature America Black. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Winner of the 1988 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, selected by Margaret Atwood. Reginald McKnight's MOUSTAPHA'S ECLIPSE was chosen by Margaret Atwood as the winner of the eighth Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction. His collection of ten short stories was selected from over 300 manuscripts submitted by published writers to the contest. The stories of MOUSTAPHA'S ECLIPSE are spoken in a true host of voices, savvy guides to the worlds of West Africa and black America, through the minefields of adolescence, racism, found and failed beliefs. Idi, a Senegalese English translator, tells a number of these tales, transposing African myths into a language his friend, a visiting black American anthropologist, understands enough to mistrust. There is the story of the ‘snaggletoothed, illiterate' peddler Moustapha Diole, who would take a knife to his own body to sell a protective charm; and of the prosperous and spiritual peanut farmer of the title story who would witness an eclipse at the price of blindness. Woven among the African voices are native American ones. In ‘First I Look at the Purse,' Walter, a super-smooth high school hood, falls, in spite of himself, for a Rosicrucian - turning him on to ‘auras and magnetism,' and leading him to out-of-body experiences. ‘Peaches' explores a black woman's first romance, a relationship with a white student that forces her to confront racism and love in the same moments, in the same man. inventory #23664 ISBN: 0822935899.