The monkey suit, and other short fiction on African Americans and justice
By: David Dante Troutt.
Publisher: New Press; Distributed by W.W. Norton
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
Subjects: Justice, Administration of -- United States -- Fiction.; African Americans -- Fiction.; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
Other titles: Monkey suit
Description: In this genre-bending series of short stories, David Dante Troutt has fictionalized the history of ten classic legal cases involving African Americans, transforming his research into tales of rare force and craft.

The ten cases will be familiar to many readers; included are Powell v. Alabama (1932), the principal Scottsboro Boys case; Buchanan v. Warley (1917), the first challenge to the constitutionality of segregation; and Mapp v. Ohio (1961), in which warrantless searches were deemed unconstitutional.

Critical turning points in the law and the nation's history, these cases also become, in Troutt's telling, points of departure in an exploration of human feeling - and black experience. "The Tale of Almost" (inspired by The State of South Carolina v. Kelly, 1920), for example, recounts the troubles of Will Kelly, a black man accused of thinking about attacking a young white girl.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Glow in the dark; title: The tale of almost; title: The bargain; title: For love of trains; title: Never was; title: Junius Dogman and the mischief; title: Bitch, son of a bitch; title: Tell about tellin'; title: Love space; title: The monkey suit; title: Afterword.