ABSTRACT
Picture, if you can, a young mother of African American descent fi nally giving in to the pleas of her eight-year-old son to listen to what he was going to read in class the next day. At high risk, his teacher told her students to write a highly imaginative short story for “show and tell period.” He decided to do his on how several explorers captured by cannibals were chopped up and stewed by the tribe. He had worked all evening getting the details right about how the explorers were tracked down systematically by the cannibals and the rituals that were used to cut up, spice, and cook the human meat. Next, all he needed was the usual endorsement of Mom, even if it was just a nod in the affi rmative.
