Uncle Sam's Nieces & Nephews

Uncle Sam's Nieces and Nephews View Samples | Order Now

This collection of short stories by Saint Solomon marks the beginning of a literary career. Swallowed up by the federal prison system, this new, young author reached into his heart and soul and found a raw but compelling talent for storytelling and writing that he had not known was there. The twelve stories that poured out of his memory and experience and imagination in six to seven months, stories that he rewrote and edited time after time in forming this book, give evidence to the literary promise of Saint Solomon.

That this book was written within the walls and razor wire of federal prison places it in a long and respected tradition of prison literature. How could a first-time author, an incarcerated man, manage to maintain not simply his equanimity, but his deep sense of the amusing and the charming aspects of human life? Only Saint Solomon knows. If there is a miracle associate with this book, that unquenched, loving attitude is it. Most prison literature is gritty, political, radical, angry, scorching, and excoriating. This collection of stories largely is an exception to that rule.

At its core, this is a book of tales about African-American men and women at the end of the twentieth century, many of them youthful, how they grow up and mature and confront a wide range of social and religious and political issues. But Saint Solomon brings a sense of humanity to his writing that extends beyond a single race and a single, if critical, part of American society. Not all, but many of the stories could as well have white (or Hispanic or Asian-American) characters as the African-American ones he brings to literary life. Universal themes and predicaments often intrigue the author. For instance, in "The Virgin Marion," Marion and Tina could be students at a high school in many corners of the United States, and the problems they face and try to solve are teen-age dilemmas, not simply African-American teenage dilemmas. Saint Solomon's characters typically are located in the dead center of the human condition, not discretely the African-American human condition. That is why these stories will be of interest to not only African-American readers, but also to white and Hispanic and Asian-American readers.

In choosing the title, Uncle Sam's Nieces and Nephews, Saint Solomon pays homage to his literary idol, Richard Wright (Uncle Tom's Children). But beyond that heartfelt courtesy, it is worth noting than his writing strategy is a good deal different that Wright's. Wright wrote with the fury and pain and pride of the oppressed. One of the first African-American artists to represent the realities and hope of his people to the full nation. His short stories (Eight Men, for instance) are raw, hard edged, serious, many shocking even today. Somewhat in contrast, the great strength of Saint Solomon's writing is its gentleness, compassion and compelling good humor. He addresses many of the issues that Wright did, but he contends with them in a different way as he peoples his tales with African Americans of later generations, at a further point of Black liberation and aspiration within the American experience.

For example, the two boys in "Writing Right", Roosevelt and Thomas, are as amusing and sympathetic as you'll ever find in a brief story. Then there is Sam's predicament at the end of "Born Again and Again", one that many Black American fathers must have faced in recent years dealing with the collision of religious faiths and traditions. Nonetheless, the story ends with smiles rather than rebukes and finger-pointing. Several stories deal with Christianity. St. Peter's heavenly patter is delivered with smiles and quiet brio in the dreamlike fantasy title "Mahogany and the Book of Life". The conniving antics of Jesus, a preacher's son, coincide with conflagration (if not fire and brimstone), as a church is destroyed and restored in "Thank You, Jesus". Finally, in several of his stories, the author writes about the amusing aspects of sexual experience, and never more effectively than in "The Intersection".

On the other hand, the author does not sidestep the sobering and even tragic elements of life. These stories tell of premature demise ("School of Hard Knocks"), two-way racial scorn ("Unbridled Hatred").