Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

Ugly little lives
content in their righteousness
karma, what a joke.

Short Review: I am going to leave this unrated because I don't know how to rate it. O'Connor is an incredibly skillful writer. I appreciate that she in very intentional with her art and incorporating Christianity into her art in a way that isn't dogmatic, but is real. I am not fond of the style of ironic tragedy. Sin and tragedy are real, but so are beauty and joy. And while there are some backhanded senses of beauty, there is virtually no joy.

I am ambivalent about her legacy. The frequent use of N word is more than just historical setting. She is making points and some of the points of those I am not completely comfortable with. Alice Walker has a chapter on O'Connor and I think it is worth reading. But Alice Walker and I have different starting points. Walker can take the good and leave the bad and be okay with the result because she is not going to forgot the history (Walker and O'Connor lived just down the road from one another when Walker was 8 and O'Connor was 28).

But as a White person, I am not sure I can take the good and leave the bad in the same way because our histories are so different.

My longer thoughts on this are on my blog at http://bookwi.se/everything-that-rises-must-converge/