What do you think?
Rate this book
Killing Color
Charlotte Watson Sherman's debut collection of short stories; a must-have for all who carry her titles
- GenresShort Stories
120 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1992
60 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Watson Sherman
15 books31 followersBorn Charlotte Denise Watson, in 1958 in Seattle (Washington), the eldest of three children in a working class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Dreamed of being a writer since third grade when Pippi Longstocking hijacked my imagination.
My mother believed it was dangerous for a daughter to always have her head in a book -- which led to reading by flashlight beneath bedcovers, a geeky, camouflaged appetite for studying the dictionary and keeping poems secret until publishing my first at nineteen.
I studied Social Sciences at Seattle University and began law school shortly after the birth of my first daughter. Once I realized I could actually become a lawyer, I left the University of Puget Sound and never looked back.
I worked as a pretrial screener, outreach coordinator, sexual abuse counselor, emergency housing counselor, child welfare worker, mental health screener, volunteer coordinator for a literacy program, research interviewer, and finally, when my youngest daughter left for college, a professional librarian.
It turns out, writing is the only thing I thought I was any good at, but it is definitely my calling.
Through an extraordinary blast of effort and good fortune, a collection of short fiction, Killing Color, was published by Calyx Books (1992); then shortly after, a novel, One Dark Body, by HarperCollins (1993); then an anthology, Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry (1994); another novel, touch, (1995), and finally, a children's book, Eli and the Swamp Man (1996).
I received the following awards, fellowships, grants:
Seattle Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, 1989; King County Arts Commission Fiction Publication Award, 1989; Artist Trust GAP Grant, 1989; Seattle Artists 1991 Research and Development Grant; Great Lakes Colleges Association Fiction Award, 1992; Black Women’s Gathering Women of Achievement Award, 1992; Washington State Arts Commission Fiction Fellowship, 1993; Brandeis University Women’s Committee Distinguished Author’s Award, 1993; Governor’s Writers Award, 1993; Seattle University Award for Professional Achievement, 1994; Granta literary magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists, shortlist, 1995; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
My fiction and nonfiction have been published in Essence, Ms., Parenting, American Visions, The Seattle Times, and Goodness Portland; as well as anthologies such as When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, The Bluelight Corner, Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, Edgewalking on the Western Rim, and In Search of Color Everywhere.
I am currently revising a third novel, as well as a YA historical fiction tale I hope will be published as an illustrated story.
My muse is history. The task of healing and reconciling the past, propels the writing. My tools: word, image, ritual, dream, magic. - See more at: http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com...
(from http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com/)
My mother believed it was dangerous for a daughter to always have her head in a book -- which led to reading by flashlight beneath bedcovers, a geeky, camouflaged appetite for studying the dictionary and keeping poems secret until publishing my first at nineteen.
I studied Social Sciences at Seattle University and began law school shortly after the birth of my first daughter. Once I realized I could actually become a lawyer, I left the University of Puget Sound and never looked back.
I worked as a pretrial screener, outreach coordinator, sexual abuse counselor, emergency housing counselor, child welfare worker, mental health screener, volunteer coordinator for a literacy program, research interviewer, and finally, when my youngest daughter left for college, a professional librarian.
It turns out, writing is the only thing I thought I was any good at, but it is definitely my calling.
Through an extraordinary blast of effort and good fortune, a collection of short fiction, Killing Color, was published by Calyx Books (1992); then shortly after, a novel, One Dark Body, by HarperCollins (1993); then an anthology, Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry (1994); another novel, touch, (1995), and finally, a children's book, Eli and the Swamp Man (1996).
I received the following awards, fellowships, grants:
Seattle Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, 1989; King County Arts Commission Fiction Publication Award, 1989; Artist Trust GAP Grant, 1989; Seattle Artists 1991 Research and Development Grant; Great Lakes Colleges Association Fiction Award, 1992; Black Women’s Gathering Women of Achievement Award, 1992; Washington State Arts Commission Fiction Fellowship, 1993; Brandeis University Women’s Committee Distinguished Author’s Award, 1993; Governor’s Writers Award, 1993; Seattle University Award for Professional Achievement, 1994; Granta literary magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists, shortlist, 1995; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
My fiction and nonfiction have been published in Essence, Ms., Parenting, American Visions, The Seattle Times, and Goodness Portland; as well as anthologies such as When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, The Bluelight Corner, Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, Edgewalking on the Western Rim, and In Search of Color Everywhere.
I am currently revising a third novel, as well as a YA historical fiction tale I hope will be published as an illustrated story.
My muse is history. The task of healing and reconciling the past, propels the writing. My tools: word, image, ritual, dream, magic. - See more at: http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com...
(from http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com/)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 26, 2017
The history of race and gender ingrain these stories as much as a pretense of the universal are ingrained into white male works by the host of pandering critics. It makes the stories an easy target for the sort whose fragile status quo complexes make them snuff and snort at the bloodbones of Beloved, even more so when considering these stories don't have Morrison's spinal cord of bare life. Agamben, for those not in the theoretical know, but that's besides the point. What matters is which trends of influenced and influencing have been preserved, and which have been glossed over as inconsequential to the greater interest. An advantage of this is I'll go out looking in the margins and often find something closely twined with the center, but if this kind of hierarchical discovery was anything more than a cold comfort, I wouldn't bother with this review and all the rest.
We could talk of magical realism if we acknowledged that its converse in all its objectivity is little more than dead knowledge, splintered lust, and holistically overwhelming fear. It's the only explanation for why the latter covers topics such as faith and menstruation in as silent or fetishizing a way as it does rape, for if subjects don't concern the status quo in any measurable sense, what's the point of paying them heed? Thus you get the 'magic' and the 'ism', qualifiers for realities that are boycotted in theatres and massacred in churches, and if you think I'm being metaphorical to a fault over here, try the mainstream discourse on Sandra Bland on for size. Sherman's stories move through such charybdis points of view rather than circling forevermore, but they still take the time and effort to explicate these events rather than cut them off as 'political'. Or 'sentimental'. There's a new search engine for kids out there that's more comfortable talking about love in terms of guns than realms outside the heterosexual, which sums up the inevitable result of all this numbfuckery better than I ever could.
There are moments in this text where I could have done with less explanation and more emphatic conciseness, but these worlds are not ones meant for me. What I can say for certainty is that the landmarks, however historically informed, are much more concerned with the children living and breathing and binding to them than the names and dates and geographical locations. It is a matter of color: the times it is killed, the times it kills, and the times when the parsing of the phrase means that, while this is a popular course of action, it never was and never will be a universal truth.
We could talk of magical realism if we acknowledged that its converse in all its objectivity is little more than dead knowledge, splintered lust, and holistically overwhelming fear. It's the only explanation for why the latter covers topics such as faith and menstruation in as silent or fetishizing a way as it does rape, for if subjects don't concern the status quo in any measurable sense, what's the point of paying them heed? Thus you get the 'magic' and the 'ism', qualifiers for realities that are boycotted in theatres and massacred in churches, and if you think I'm being metaphorical to a fault over here, try the mainstream discourse on Sandra Bland on for size. Sherman's stories move through such charybdis points of view rather than circling forevermore, but they still take the time and effort to explicate these events rather than cut them off as 'political'. Or 'sentimental'. There's a new search engine for kids out there that's more comfortable talking about love in terms of guns than realms outside the heterosexual, which sums up the inevitable result of all this numbfuckery better than I ever could.
There are moments in this text where I could have done with less explanation and more emphatic conciseness, but these worlds are not ones meant for me. What I can say for certainty is that the landmarks, however historically informed, are much more concerned with the children living and breathing and binding to them than the names and dates and geographical locations. It is a matter of color: the times it is killed, the times it kills, and the times when the parsing of the phrase means that, while this is a popular course of action, it never was and never will be a universal truth.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews