I Know Some Things: Stories About Childhood by Contemporary Writers

"When writers of fiction have made the effort to explore the mottled landscape of a child's secrets and understanding, they have often created stories of ferocious poignancy", writes Lorrie Moore in her introduction to this dazzling collection of stories about childhood. I Know Some Things presents the innocence and knowingness of a child's-eye view as it confronts the contradictions and hypocrisies of the adult world. Some of today's best writers, including Margaret Atwood, Toni Cade Bambara, Harold Brodkey, Spalding Gray, Jamaica Kincaid, Susan Minot, Alice Munro and Amy Tan, capture childhood incidents that are comic, startling, touching and disturbing. Each story is told by a child character or by the adult who was that child, skillfully preserving the child's voice and role as actor and witness in the drama. The stories all explore pivotal moments in childhood when something becomes known, something is tested, some turning point reached. With "the wily, rhetorical manipulations and inventions of someone not yet part of the grown-up world", writes Moore, child narrators show us the ways in which adult actions resonate through children, and the real import of childhood perceptions, allegiances and decisions. Chosen for their insight and sheer literary brilliance, these stories range across age, gender, class, ethnicity and geography. Together they disrupt easy notions of childhood obliviousness and naivete, and will not fail to touch the child in any adult.