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  • Masterful Juxtaposition
  • Diane Goodman (bio)
Don't Wait to be Called
Jacob R. Weber
Washington Writers' Publishing House
www.washingtonwriters.org
179 Pages; Print, $16.95

Don't Wait to be Called showcases Jacob Weber's talent as a narrative strategist who has great insight into what separates us and what brings us together as human beings, despite—or in spite of—vastly different life circumstances. Examining the range of experiences that define and shape us—race, religion, family, memory, fear, hope, isolation, romance—the stories in this collection tackle immigration, ISIS, history, pop culture, academics, rape, torture . . . and much more, all while demonstrating what is—in the end—our shared humanity in an often pitiless world.

Several of these stories are told from the point of view of refugees from Eritrea, a perspective that exposes the irony of privilege: "Dogs were not pets in Eritrea. She had seen stories in newspapers about singers in America who cared for their little dogs like babies, carrying them around in tiny bags, bedecking them with jewelry. In Eritrea, dogs either figured out how to get along on their own or they died." Here, as in many of these stories, Weber masterfully juxtaposes what must be the bewildering American experience against the stark reality of the refugee experience that compelled the observer to flee.

In the first story, "Everything is Peaceful Here Except for Missing You," the narrator is a refugee from Eritrea who in just a few pages skillfully reveals the great cultural divide through a description of Skyping with his mother who, with his sister, escaped Eritrea and now "make a good living cleaning toilets in Saudi Arabia for people who think of them as dogs." The mix of modern technology, cultural memories the African family tries to hold on to—his mother burns incense while she Skypes "because a home should smell blessed"—and the struggles of being an outsider set side by side against the American promise of hope and opportunity show that no matter how difficult or demeaning the new life might be, it is still free:

A year ago, I was looking for a part-time job to go with the one I already have at my uncle's parking garage. A second cousin was stranded in the Sudan when the guy smuggling him into Libya was arrested. It didn't matter that I'm still in college or that I had never met this distant cousin. When a family member needs help in an Eritrean family, everybody helps. So I answered an ad for a Tigrinya speaker I saw on Craigslist that paid thirty-five dollars an hour.

In some stories, the distance from family, from familiarity, is not eased by any apparent similarities, an observation that deepens the alienation within the immigrant experience. In the story "Silver Spring," "The woman's face turned from grape to prune. Daud knew the expression. Sometimes, black-skinned people born in American would address him like they were old friends but shut down as soon as they heard his accent and realized he was African-African-American not just African American like them." These kinds of dashed expectations are one of the things that make this collection so compelling, how hope can be ignited and then distinguished in the blink of an eye. Of course race plays a major role in these situations but class figures prominently, as well, such as when Weber mirrors stories of struggling working class Americans against stories of struggling working class immigrants in America: here, class, race and the seeming impossibility of creating an "American" identity within or outside of those categories reveals a kind of endless frustration.

A good example of how this happens in Weber's work is in the story "A Cinnabon at Mondawmin," which is a letter written by a student to a teacher, asking that she "clean this up for me so it doesn't sound too ratchet." Ratchet, which is described as "ghetto dialect," does not really characterize the language in the letter but the story's point is clear: if you want to thrive in America—if you want to identify, impress, succeed—you...

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