Point of View

Elbow Room consists of twelve diverse stories sharing no common point of view. "Why I like Country Music" and "The Story of a Dead Man" are attempts by narrators intent on setting another character straight on events and/or conditions of the past. These stories, therefore, alternate between first-person present and third person past. "The Story of a Scar" is a first-person, past tense story within a story, with an anonymous male telling about the experience of listening to an anonymous female victim of a slashing tell her harrowing tale. "Widows and Orphans" and "Just Enough for the City" are told in the first-person past tense, and the remaining stories are told in an impersonal third person past. All of the narrators are black and most of the conflicts are among blacks. Whites have major roles in "Problems of Art" and "A Loaf of Bread," but...