Book Review
Author: Cheo Tyehimba
Book: Like Loving Backward
Rating: Five stars (out of Five)

An Excerpt:

"Like Loving Backward is a collection of seven short stories by Cheo Tyehimba, a successful journalist who has written for magazines including Time, Entertainment Weekly, People, and Oprah. His stories are written in the tradition of folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, grounded in the everyday but unearthing the magic hidden within the mundane. There is the garlic farmer who hears voices of the dead, a boy with magical hair who gets his first haircut, and a long-lost father who turns up only to disappear into a tree....The stories in Like Loving Backward are a pleasure to read because Tyehimba writes the way people talk. His ear for dialogue is matched by his skillful descriptions of characters; he conjures them up with visuals like “ironing board shoulders.” And ultimately, Tyehimba is able to rescue the African American male from stereotype by giving depth and sensitivity to experiences that are otherwise noted as merely statistics, like boys abandoned by their fathers and an unjust police force. The author also paints vivid images of his stories’ backdrops, from a North Philadelphia barbershop to the BART, San Francisco’s public transit train. His stories convey a sense of community while underscoring the plight of his characters, who must navigate through a world that is so much larger than the self."

Amanda McCorquodale
ForeWord Literary Magazine, http://www.forewordmagazine.com/