VEMPHaHa reviewed Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell
Review of 'Faces at the Bottom of the Well' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
These are not traditional short stories. They are explorations in racism using fiction techniques which, as I understand it, were all first published as law review articles. I would have liked to have been a law student coming across these stories in a law review. They would've appeared slippery to me, hard to get a hand on to rebut but devastatingly effective. The point being, when you pull back and set the stories inside the history of America, the depressing outcomes feel exactly inevitable. Any other ending would have been contrived mush. Not true to the fiction imperative. So the idea, and execution, was genius.
