EXCERPT FROM DOROTHY ALLISON'S FOREWORD

If one believes in a world of story, a terrain in which short stories, novels, and memoirs intersect to create a reality as powerful and as full as human history itself, then being part of that creation offers a sense of validation and purpose that subsumes awards bestowed or money paid. You want your story to meet all other stories, to become part of the great human narrative, to shape how people think about themselves and their history. I truly believe that human change takes place through story, that we can only become what we can imagine, and that imagination is constantly in the process of being augmented, enlarged, or diminished. Small narratives, reductively cruel stories, and mean-spirited tales diminish us. Large-souled narratives—attempts to fully understand individuals and communities, to portray us fully and with compassion—enlarge us, making us more than we have been seen to be before. It is how we imagine ourselves that can be changed, and no political slogan, no matter how catchy or rhythmic, is as powerful as a narrative that takes us inside someone we have never imagined before or pulls us inside someone we have always dismissed or held in contempt and makes us see that person in new and deeper ways.

A short story opens the door to a brightly lit room. It calls us out of darkness, makes sense of what cannot be explained, and validates the most commonplace choices of our daily lives. Of course every now and then a story does another thing entirely. It stops us cold and leaves us sitting stunned. But there are lifetime truths to which sitting stunned is the only response—certainly preferable to burying ourselves in distraction or loud noisy babble.