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I Got Somebody in Staunton: Acclaimed Literary Stories of Jazz, Race, and the American South
In twelve graceful, sensual stories, William Henry Lewis traces the line between the real and the imaginary, acknowledging the painful ghosts of the past in everyday encounters. Written in a style that has been acclaimed by our finest writers, from Edward P. Jones and Nikki Giovanni to Dave Eggers, I Got Somebody in Staunton is one of the most highly praised literary events to take on contemporary America. In the title story, a young professor befriends an enigmatic white woman in a bar along the back roads of Virginia, but has second thoughts about driving her to a neighboring town as his uncle's stories of lynchings resonate through his mind. Another tale portrays a Kansas City jazz troupe's travels to Denver, where they hope to strike it big. Meanwhile, a man in the midst of paradise must decide whether he will languish or thrive. With I Got Somebody in Staunton Lewis has lyrically and unflinchingly chronicled the lives of those most often neglected.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 18, 2013
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: In I Got Somebody in Staunton, the acclaimed William Henry Lewis brings us ten often sensual and always eye-opening tales. "Rossonian Days" follows a Kansas City jazz troupe to a gig in Denver, where they hope to strike it big. This story, itself a swinging riff, is also a humbling chronicle of the evolution of jazz and an incisive look at the history of America's racial divide. In "Potcakes," Carlos Stubbs is troubled and weary in the midst of paradise, obsessed with the incessant barking of dogs. He has a degree he's not using and a woman he's afraid to love. Time is passing, and he must decide whether he'll languish or thrive. "Kudzu" reunites a couple whose sweetly sexual relationship comes to an end when Evvie, a bohemian free spirit, "drove west, drove north, away from here" in search of something more compelling than her small Southern town could offer. And in the title story, "I Got Somebody in Staunton," a Black college professor, haunted by his dying uncle Ize's memories of lynchings and the ways of the old South, flirts with danger by giving a ride to an enigmatic young White woman whose long, blond hair is twisting into dreads.
With I Got Somebody in Staunton, Lewis has written stories that will catapult him into the first rank of American storytellers.
My Review: The publisher having kindly given one-line synopses above, I confine myself to a summary review. With relief, might I add.
Pleasantly euphonious sentences, mildly interesting ideas, and a very strong sense of place make the collection easy on the eyes. The writing is very much the point of the stories, though I won't for a second take away from the emotional impact of the stories chosen. "Shades," a coming-of-age tale featuring a single mom of ineffable coolness and a deadbeat daddy of loud and brassy commonness, is a pitch-perfect evocation of a teenaged boy's first brush with the pain of a separate, unique identity, one not dependent on his parents absent or present. Good stuff, rich and savory, very well crafted indeed.
But...and here's why I'm giving the collection 3 stars...I went back through the book looking for call-outs and quotes. (Y'all must've noticed that I like to use quotes to make my point about a book by now.) I found none.
Not a one.
Like eating a box of dates, or a pan of shortbread: Tasty, yes, but one bite is much like the next, which is much like the last, and nowhere except at the end of one date or cookie can one sense a shift in the textural flow.
Uniformly of high quality, the stories suffer from just exactly that: Uniformity.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Publisher Says: In I Got Somebody in Staunton, the acclaimed William Henry Lewis brings us ten often sensual and always eye-opening tales. "Rossonian Days" follows a Kansas City jazz troupe to a gig in Denver, where they hope to strike it big. This story, itself a swinging riff, is also a humbling chronicle of the evolution of jazz and an incisive look at the history of America's racial divide. In "Potcakes," Carlos Stubbs is troubled and weary in the midst of paradise, obsessed with the incessant barking of dogs. He has a degree he's not using and a woman he's afraid to love. Time is passing, and he must decide whether he'll languish or thrive. "Kudzu" reunites a couple whose sweetly sexual relationship comes to an end when Evvie, a bohemian free spirit, "drove west, drove north, away from here" in search of something more compelling than her small Southern town could offer. And in the title story, "I Got Somebody in Staunton," a Black college professor, haunted by his dying uncle Ize's memories of lynchings and the ways of the old South, flirts with danger by giving a ride to an enigmatic young White woman whose long, blond hair is twisting into dreads.
With I Got Somebody in Staunton, Lewis has written stories that will catapult him into the first rank of American storytellers.
My Review: The publisher having kindly given one-line synopses above, I confine myself to a summary review. With relief, might I add.
Pleasantly euphonious sentences, mildly interesting ideas, and a very strong sense of place make the collection easy on the eyes. The writing is very much the point of the stories, though I won't for a second take away from the emotional impact of the stories chosen. "Shades," a coming-of-age tale featuring a single mom of ineffable coolness and a deadbeat daddy of loud and brassy commonness, is a pitch-perfect evocation of a teenaged boy's first brush with the pain of a separate, unique identity, one not dependent on his parents absent or present. Good stuff, rich and savory, very well crafted indeed.
But...and here's why I'm giving the collection 3 stars...I went back through the book looking for call-outs and quotes. (Y'all must've noticed that I like to use quotes to make my point about a book by now.) I found none.
Not a one.
Like eating a box of dates, or a pan of shortbread: Tasty, yes, but one bite is much like the next, which is much like the last, and nowhere except at the end of one date or cookie can one sense a shift in the textural flow.
Uniformly of high quality, the stories suffer from just exactly that: Uniformity.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
December 1, 2025
Picked this book up because it features my hometown - was definitely not disappointed by the lyrical writing of these stories🧚🏻♀️✨️
June 11, 2013
I loved these stories. Very well written stories of the black experience.
February 17, 2022
This collection of 10 short stories made for a fascinating read, written a decade after the 1996 work of Mr. Lewis "In the Arms of Our Elders" in which Publishers Weekly described as a "thoughtful, appealing collection deeply concerned with the pride and pain of African-American heritage." This 2005 work of 10 short stories, a number of which are written with the backdrop of the American South. "Rossonian Days" is the final short story in the collection which highlights the road an aspiring jazz band from Kansas City finds itself on the road, making its way out to perform in Denver, in the historic Five Points part of the city during the 1960s. He describes "The Rossonian: oasis in jazz nowhere on the way to jazz somewhere." The players know that one breakthrough could change it all as they find reasons to get away from their regular jobs in order to play for that one shot that could make all the difference. There is great passion in the story as it traces the history of jazz from the early 20th century and the role of genre within African-American culture.
March 20, 2018
Two stars for the two stories I think I liked. The others, apparently I’m not that deep because I felt I wasted too much time with this book. I couldn’t continue to struggle no matter how hard I wanted too and hate to leave a book unfinished. That last story did me in because those first 3-4 pages made absolutely no sense to me.
May 27, 2020
Beautifully written collection of stories.
July 29, 2023
Slow and sad, and somehow suspenseful.
October 14, 2009
I Got Somebody in Staunton is a collection of ten short stories by award winning author, William Henry Lewis, that tenderly embraces human condition. The stories depict honest, confused, and quite ordinary characters dealing with a myriad of situations, painful memories, and awkward circumstances in Black America. They are simply doing their best to find their way in the world they didn't create. I loved that the underlying themes carried in each story seemed to emulate a timeless and universal vibe.
A few of my favorite stories are:
Shades, where a young teenaged boy meets his father for the first time and questions his feelings for the man who abandoned him on the night of his conception. The man has direct discourse with the boy and fails to recognize his child, leaving the boy to deal with feelings of hate, resentment, and unconditional love.
In the title story, I Know Somebody in Staunton, a black man who has been schooled all his life by an elderly uncle about the beatings and lynchings surrounding black male/white female encounters decides to live dangerously and pick up a white woman hitchhiker in a bar on his way south to visit the ailing uncle. As they journey further south and encounter a group of angry, restless white men, the haunting refrains of his uncle's warnings weigh on him and seem to grow stronger as he progresses on his journey. This story is a history lesson as the author mentions infamous altercations involving Emmit Till, the Scottsboro Nine, James Byrd, and others.
More history, in the musical sense, is shared in Rossonian Days, where the author describes a jazz band's trip west to Denver to "make it big." He craftily parallels their trek with their ancestor's trials during the Middle Passage and how the voices and rhythms of jazz and blues greats of today (and he names quite a few) echo the chants and drumbeats of ancient Africa.
Although I didn't care for every short story presented (some touched me more than others), I liked Lewis's overall writing style and his compassionate views. He has great writing skills and a wonderful insight into the human psyche, heart, and soul.
A few of my favorite stories are:
Shades, where a young teenaged boy meets his father for the first time and questions his feelings for the man who abandoned him on the night of his conception. The man has direct discourse with the boy and fails to recognize his child, leaving the boy to deal with feelings of hate, resentment, and unconditional love.
In the title story, I Know Somebody in Staunton, a black man who has been schooled all his life by an elderly uncle about the beatings and lynchings surrounding black male/white female encounters decides to live dangerously and pick up a white woman hitchhiker in a bar on his way south to visit the ailing uncle. As they journey further south and encounter a group of angry, restless white men, the haunting refrains of his uncle's warnings weigh on him and seem to grow stronger as he progresses on his journey. This story is a history lesson as the author mentions infamous altercations involving Emmit Till, the Scottsboro Nine, James Byrd, and others.
More history, in the musical sense, is shared in Rossonian Days, where the author describes a jazz band's trip west to Denver to "make it big." He craftily parallels their trek with their ancestor's trials during the Middle Passage and how the voices and rhythms of jazz and blues greats of today (and he names quite a few) echo the chants and drumbeats of ancient Africa.
Although I didn't care for every short story presented (some touched me more than others), I liked Lewis's overall writing style and his compassionate views. He has great writing skills and a wonderful insight into the human psyche, heart, and soul.
February 26, 2010
Lewis' collection of short stories were aight. Nothing spectacular. Could be due to me just finishing, "drown" Junot Diaz' collection of short stories, right before I started this book. Not a good idea, since Diaz' collection was spectacular...devoured it in 2 days, while "I Got Somebody in Staunton" took nearly 3 weeks to complete. His style didnt intrigue me, though the the 1st two stories did keep me interested. The others...well it felt like work trying to get to the end, which is why it took me so long to finish the book.
July 9, 2013
Mr. Lewis is a native of Virginia, and some of the stories are set in locales around Fredericksburg, etc. This collection of stories by an African-American author made me change my mind about reading collections of stories instead of novels. Told with rich and colorful language, most of these stories, especially the title one, gave me a better perception of what it is like to live the African-American experience. This man can really write and the stories touched me and made me think. June 27, 2013 *****
April 15, 2009
Beautiful writing with an exquisite sense of place. These stories will stay with you. "Potcake" was my favorite in the collection. And the title story vibrates with tension long after you read the final words on the page.
August 4, 2011
Lewis explores the social tensions of ethnicity in a context that internalizes them within the mind of the protagonist. As issues among society are confronted, so are the individual experiences surrounding them. A good set of stories that are definitively American in their mood and tone.
March 9, 2011
What a beautiful little collection of stories! Not sure what else to say except that each struck a chord and made me grateful for the process of reading something I loved.
August 5, 2008
can't my book club get a good one?!?!?!?
(just teasing Elizabeth)
(just teasing Elizabeth)
August 13, 2008
He is a beautiful writer.
November 18, 2017
Powerfully written stories of race and place. Fully realized characters in vividly rendered settings. Psychologically and ecologically insightful.
November 26, 2011
I'm not crazy about short story collections, but Lewis has an amazing voice. I would definitely be interested in reading some of his other work.
May 28, 2013
hmmm. a couple of the stories were riveting. a couple were confusing. all interesting.
July 23, 2007
these stories capture time and place beautifully but also exist outside of and beyond both.
May 29, 2008
Raw and gritty stories of southern black men.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews