It was the best example I could think of to help supplement my practical writing education-the book I went to when our instructor told us to “read like a writer.” For no reason or every reason, I found this book again.
Many years after undergrad, I started a Master’s program at Johns Hopkins University. It moved me, but I didn’t quite understand it. I thought: “You can do this?” “Who does this?” “ I want to do this.” But, I was not able to appreciate the book as much as I would later. But, when I read it in an undergraduate Harlem Renaissance literature course, my mind expanded like a batch of Southern biscuits rising in the oven, a once hard, round mound building slowly upwards into something providing sustenance. I was a writer before this book came into my life. I can’t lie and say it is the book that made me want to write. I love it passionately could not possibly exist without it.” This sentiment is true for me too.
The slim, dark Kelly-green cover of my now dog-eared, scribbled-on copy quotes Alice Walker: “ has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. In another instance, is a collection of poems, songs, and spirituals. The book is divided into themes portraying Reconstruction-era black life in the country and the city. In one instance, it is a collection of very short stories-short-shorts or flash fiction or prose poetry is what we would call them now, but who knows what the form was called back in 1923 when it was first published, if anything. Only the barest of explanations will ever make it comprehensible. This book is complication made tangible in black ink and sepia-turned paper. I can only give it this basic label because defining it with terms and categories would mean dismissing one or more of its elements. Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer’s Cane is a story collection I always come back to when I want to reeducate myself on how to write flash. Submit your own “Why Flash Fiction?” article or other flash-related essays on our Submittable page ! Coleman delves into the tradition of flash in African American literature and how it drives the lyricism and urgency in her flash fiction. In this column, District Lit fiction editor and 2016 Kathy Fish Fellowship finalist Tyrese L. I n SmokeLong ‘s “Why Flash Fiction?” series, flash fiction writers and editors explore what draws them to the form, from the first time they wrote a piece of flash to why flash resonates with them.
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