Book Review: We Speak CHICAGOESE
We Speak CHICAGOESE—Stories and Poems by Chicago Writers. Dennis Foley and Bill Donlon, Editors. Side Street Press, September 17, 2016, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 237 pages.
Reviewed by Greg Borzo.
We Speak CHICAGOESE is an eclectic collection of short stories and poems about Chicago that portray the city’s flavor and character—its grandness and grittiness, its toughness and tenderness.
Published by Side Street Press, this anthology is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the city through its literature. In just a couple hundred pages, the reader will taste a vast variety of topics served up by a wonderfully broad range of writers.
Despite its misleading title, this book has nothing to do with a particular style of speech: “da” game, a la Mike Ditka.
Rather, it covers Chicago literature and is quite refined. CHICAGOESE serves up a smorgasbord of beautifully diverse voices from writers covering the patchwork of neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and traditions that make up our forever appealing and seemingly troubled city.
The writers, including some known authors and poets such as Joe Meno, Frank Norris, John McNally, and Patricia Ann McNair, penned the 33 short stories and poems in this collection. Many pieces have been published before, but no matter because readers might have missed them. Other pieces appear to be original. I wish the editors had spelled this out in their surprisingly sparse introduction. In addition, they could have explained how they selected the writers and then gathered their selections. There must be some stories to tell about the whole process. Where did the idea for the book come from? How did the editors approach the writers? How long did it take? What were the challenges?
Co-editor Dennis Foley contributed one piece to this tome. The gripping but somewhat disturbing Pretty Please gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “asking for it.” A few of my favorite pieces are Stuart Dybek’s Field Trips about Catholic nuns taking their young students to Cook County Jail and the Union Stock Yard, Rick Kogan’s Typewriters, about growing up with the sound of typewriters (It starts like this: “In the beginning was the sound….”), and Dominic Pacyga’s Photographs and Memories, which includes the line, “We were all in Vietnam. The whole country was there.” These are powerful, memorable pieces of writing. And they portray quintessential Chicago.
The book includes 16 black and white photos shot by Patrick Foley, Dennis Foley’s son, that frame the stories and poems. The stark photos depicting church steeples and “L” platforms, fountains and alleys, and bridges and barbed wire have a distinctive Chicago look and feel.
Overall, reading We Speak CHICAGOESE will make you want to read more Chicago authors and poets who write about the Windy City—both the ones included in the book and others. Readers new to this genre should be prepared, quite simply, to be swept away; readers who are familiar with this genre should be prepared to discover several new voices and leads to more great writers bringing an extraordinary place to life.
Nadine Kenney Johnstone’s Loosen the Edges, Flip Quickly poignantly describes how living in Chicago, with its myriad possibilities, provokes the question in a young woman’s mind of “What do I really want to do right now?” Pick up this book and discover these writers!