A review by katherineflitsch_
Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.0

This is certainly written well and with a measured and surefooted voice! I enjoyed the multiple points of view and the gentle way all the stories came together. DECENT PEOPLE read like a contemporary-voiced version of a historical fiction book I might have read in school during an important unit on racism in the United States. I appreciated this read, and I enjoyed it, particularly in a vacuum. However, I just didn’t find this story daring at all considering its 2023 publication date. Perhaps I’ve just read a decent amount of literature of this sort given the college courses I took towards my English lit degree, but this story didn’t seem to illuminate to me anything new about the experience of being Black or gay in the South in the 1970s that I hadn’t already read in other (often contemporaneous and therefore more feeling) accounts and fictions and poems. And given DECENT PEOPLE’s pub year, I would have hoped for more boldness somehow: a story that explicitly criticizes the mistreatment of gay and Black people isn’t exactly daring or revolutionary in 2023. All in all, the ideas in this book felt rather safe and familiar, and I would have liked a splash of the genuinely shocking, the bold, or the innovative. 
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