Holler, Child

****Longlisted for the National Book Award**

Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Fiction****

An extraordinary short story collection about community, home, betrayal, and forgiveness from a writer whose spellbinding, buoyant storytelling will break your heart as it tends to the wounds.*
*Texas Monthly
***
In Holler, Child* s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something hope, reconciliation, freedom.

In Cutting Horse, the appearance of a horse in a man s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In Holler, Child, a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And Time After shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother the one who saved her many times over.

Throughout Holler, Child, we see love lost and gained, and grief turned to hope. This collection peers deeply into lives of women and men experiencing intimate and magnificent reckonings exploring how race, power, and inequality map on the individual, and demonstrating the mythic proportions of everyday life.

Autorentext

LaToya Watkins

Klappentext

"In Holler, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something-hope, reconciliation, freedom. In 'Cutting Horse,' the appearance of a horse in a man's suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In 'Holler, Child,' a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And 'Time After' shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother-the one who saved her many times over. Throughout Holler, Child, we see love lost and gained, and grief turned to hope. Much like LaToya Watkins's debut novel, Perish, this collection peers deeply into lives of women and men experiencing intimate and magnificent reckonings-exploring how race, power, and inequality map on the individual, and demonstrating the mythic proportions of everyday life"

Zusammenfassung
****Longlisted for the National Book Award**

Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Fiction****

An extraordinary short story collection about community, home, betrayal, and forgiveness—from a writer whose “spellbinding, buoyant” storytelling will break your heart as it tends to the wounds.*
*Texas Monthly
***
In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. 
 
In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And “Time After” shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother—the one who saved her many times over.  
 
Throughout Holler, Child*, we see love lost and gained, and grief turned to hope. This collection peers deeply into lives of women and men experiencing intimate and magnificent reckonings—exploring how race, power, and inequality map on the individual, and demonstrating the mythic proportions of everyday life.

Leseprobe
The Mother

For the Only Son

The visits done died down a little bit now. When it first happened, a week ago, all kind of reporters was camped out in my yard. Some still come. The rustlers, like this one sitting in front of me. They still asking bout Hawk. Bout how he come to call hisself the Messiah. Bout who his daddy is, but I ain't got nothing for them.

I look out the window I keep my chair pulled up next to. Ain't no sun, just cold and still. Banjo lift his head up when he see my eyes on him, but it don't take him long to let it fall back on his paws. He done got his rope a little tangled up. Can't move too much with it like that, but he can breathe and lay down. He all right. I'll go out and work out the knot when I can-when this gal leave.

It's cold out there, but I ain't too worried bout Banjo. He got natural insulation. I'm the one cold and I'm on the inside-supposed to be on the inside, cause I'm a person. I ain't got no insulation, though. This old house ain't got none neither. The window is rickety and wood-framed. Whole house is. Whole house ain't no thicker-no stronger than a big old piece of plywood. Ain't nothing to separate me from the cold wind outside but the glass and the pane.

This gal sitting there shivering like white folk ain't used to the cold. Everybody-even me-know white folks is makers of the cold. And this one here white as the snow on the ground out there. Ain't no whole lot of snow; not enough to stick, to keep these wandering folks like her out my face. I wonder if the snow reached Abilene fore Hawk and his white folks left life for good. Fore he crucified hisself and took all them other people with him. Wonder if he left this world clean.

"Trees on the outside my window naked all the time," I say, and I pretend in my mind I was raised here and not on Thirty-Fourth. Just pretend I been on the East Side all along. On the East Side, where good-time whoring didn't never catch, even if being strung out on drugs did. Where snow come to cover up the dirt in places where grass don't never grow like icing covering up chocolate cake or brownies or anything dark and sweet. The East Side. Where you be happy poor and don't try to pretend you can fuck your way out. I just pretend in my mind I was brought up poor and wasn't never no whore.

"Ma'am?" the girl say, like I done confused her. Lines come up on her forehead. Make all them big freckles look like they shifting. Like she got skin like a sow. Skin that got a life of its own and move and breathe and filthy. She run her hand through her stringy red hair. White-folk hair. I pray to Jesus she don't leave none of it in my orange shag carpet.

"Some folks see green in the summer. But come this time of year, everybody trees look like them out yonder." I nod my head at the window. I want to make sure she get a good look at the naked, flimsy trees out there. "Like they naked. Like they poor," I say after a while.

"Oh. Yes," she say, nodding her head and letting her eyes open real wide like she recognize something I just said. She lift up her head a little bit to look past me-to look out my window. "But won't you let the dog in? He's so small for the cold." I don't say nothing, but she say something else. "Joshua's father, Ms. Hawkins. I asked about him. Remember?"

I sigh real loud. I want her to know that what she asking me to talk bout don't come easy. I'd rather tell her my momma was a junkie whore just like her momma, and the little two-room shanty the government help me rent now would've been a mansion in the sky for either one of them. I want to tell her I was fourteen and pregnant when Butch Ugewe come to the Hitching Post and saved me. Made me his. A honest woman. I want to finally tell somebody-anybody-how Momma ain't put up no fight. How all Butch had to do was…