James Coleman’s chapter argues that Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City is tied together by more than location, but by Black tradition, community, and storytelling. To Coleman, these elements are what ties the collection together as a cohesive whole and allows Jones to explore the overarching theme of “lostness.” Coleman dissects each story highlighting the “lostness” theme along with justifying the story’s placement in the collection.
Coleman argues that the ambiguity and seeming disjointedness of Jones’s collection is not just beneficial to emphasizing “lostness,” but is also verifiably intentional. Coleman points out the flaws of the primary characters, driving home that their satisfaction, or lack thereof, can be directly contributed to their relationship to Blackness in Washington. This informs the focus of the chapter: showing how the movement through Washington, D.C. in Jones’s collection mimics the Great Migration from South to North. Depending on the relationship between the protagonists and Black culture and tradition, their position in the city changes. Coleman believes that Jones’s collection is a masterwork of weaving past, present, future, and individual relationships of Blackness. This chapter illustrates how a fiction collection can be organized and how seemingly unrelated stories can belong together and strengthen one another.
