A review by imiji
How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill by Jericho Brown, Darlene Taylor

informative reflective

4.25

so glad i picked up this craft anthology (craft anthology! what a thing! i kind of think this is the ideal mode of discussing craft, one that allows for disagreement and dialogue and answerlessness between writers and pieces). i especially appreciated the jericho brown interview, the carl phillips essay ("muscularity and eros," INCREDIBLE, will think about it for a long long time), the tiphanie yanique piece on how fiction writers can utilize form (i didn't entirely agree on the exact take, but i appreciated the thesis a lot!), the tayari jones essay ("craft capsules" -- the idea that you have a novel when you have a moral question you don't actually know the moral answer to is still with me), and the crystal wilkinson piece on approaching your characters with curiosity to excavate their memory.