To the admittedly limited understanding of a white reader like myself, this story of a black Army Air Corps pilot in training in the South during World War II seems to compress within its 27 pages much of the tension of the African American experience. Flying too high and too fast, Todd's plane is brought down, absurdly, by a buzzard. Between ignorant black men and condescending whites, his course of flight seemed mapped by the nature of things away from all needed and natural landmarks. A bingo winner, a rural rube, cannot bring himself to let go of the button controlling the spinning wheel that will determine his prize. At the end, when he wins, he loses.
Some people think so.
But American is better than both, son. Roger Miller is a freelance writer in Lopez, Pennsylvania.