Clarion Vol 10: Cauleen Smith: The Wanda Coleman Songbook
Bingham Bryant
Colors of Kelly Gabron
P61-62
127 Words
1 Note
1min
Excerpt:
Early in Drylongso (1998), Cauleen Smith’s first and only narrative feature to date, the protagonist, Pica (Toby Smith), sits on her front porch at night. A car pulls up across the street. Inside is a couple in the midst of an argument that culminates in the man dragging the woman from the vehicle and throwing her to the curb, then driving off into the darkness.
The scene is uncanny. Not in its broad outline, which is, if anything, all too familiar, generic even—both as an undeniable social reality and the stuff of fiction. What lends the scene its uncanniness are the ways in which Smith defamiliarizes it, making it both more specific and more abstract with the same techniques—starting with point of view.
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