Elbow Room

James Alan McPherson · 1943–2016 · USA

Why it matters

Twelve stories track Black and white Americans across regional and class lines, colliding, sometimes violently, sometimes with surprising tenderness. McPherson's second collection made him the first Black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, its irony always shadowed by genuine generosity.

At a glance

Understated, ironic stories with shifting narrators reward close, patient reading.