Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

5 June 2017: "I just don't understand what we're supposed to do with these...how they all fit together..." --a student in my ENGL 355 class today, opening up our last day of discussing Randall Kenan's Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead might be the most difficult text we read in ENGL 355. It's dark and disturbing at times, full of different voices and styles. And these interconnected stories of the fictional town Kenan creates operate one way individually, but other ways in conversation with one another. But how they connect and what we are supposed to do with those connections...I always have a hard time articulating it. So I was glad that this student made explicit what is so difficult about this work. It led us to keep working on coming up with answers during class...I think we got somewhere, but even if we didn't, the attempts were fun and rewarding.