Imperilled Communities in Edward P. Jones's 'Lost in the City' and Dagoberto Gilb's The Magic of Blood

Abstract

Proceeding from the notion that short-story sequences construct semblances of 'community' through their interweaving of distinct but related fictional voices, we examine the 'visions of community' offered in these two recent story sequences. Portraying, respectively, the African American inhabitants of Washington, DC, and the dispersed Chicano peoples of the Southwest, Jones's and Gilb's collections depict the tensions experienced by minority groups between assimilationist desires and dreams of ethnic identification and continuity. Ultimately, each collection constructs a vision of community whose values and desires reflect an ironic, supplemental relationship to the national narrative of the United States.