Book Review: American Masculine

Published on October 07, 2011 by IAM

The following is a guest post by Melissa Ergo.

Shann Ray’s “American Masculine” thoughtfully illustrates notions of our human condition in the fresh context of Montana, Idaho, and Washington. More like a reel of visually striking short films, the stories unfold before our imaginations in a wintry quietude. They dance with presence and clarity in poignant delivery and their poetic rawness leaves an icy bite.

The author creatively addresses questions of our human nature, brokenness, and masculinity. Is our desire for goodness hopelessly shrouded by the darkness of our humanity? Is there nothing other than what we see before us in this often bitter and trying existence? How do we reconcile the broken facets of traditional masculinity that often work deep fissures into relationships? The stories evoke the piercing sting that settles so deeply within us when we experience loss, death, and broken relationships. We are swept into a burdened emptiness alongside the characters as they work through their struggles. Ray uses characters and conflicts both fresh and familiar to subtly suggest that there is indeed hope for redemption from this messy and complicated human existence.

A motif of light penetrating darkness draws these stories together with aesthetic and metaphorical effectiveness. The light both literally and figuratively seeps its way into each vignette as a glimmer of indistinguishable hope. Hope-- it does not run dry even in the bleakest of these gritty tales. Ray paints a series of numinous images with a deeply moving and ethereal light that peeks into the icy gray settings of eerie desolateness and heartbreak. He brews a tension between the human tendency to withdraw into darkness and that sacred light of hope for redemption from it. The tension is a wild rodeo, a brittle and tangled knot, yet there is beauty in the struggle.

Ray illustrates the wondrous beauty of towering mountains, vast canyons, broad plains, and rivers that sprawl with majesty and exquisite verdure. He has a powerful and multisensory manner of engaging the reader; like a lived experience, is difficult to forget the striking images of snow-laden land, the bite of crisp air and the smell of fresh outdoors. Something in the grand beauty of the land provokes the characters to stillness and insists that our humanity is originally something to do with that goodness. It suggests that perhaps, at our core we are wired with a capacity to access that great goodness once again.

Understated yet vibrant, “American Masculine” gracefully delivers a deeply moving and cinematic account of our humanity. It is an excellent and complex narrative that prods us to evaluate our notions of manhood and forgiveness, and to see the glimmer of hope that is present even in the darkest of our trials.

MORE:
Click here to listen to author Shann Ray discuss his work with Christy Tennant on IAM Conversations.

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Melissa Ergo is an artist based in Seattle, where she is a student at Seattle Pacific University and an intern for International Arts Movement.