The Kojo Hand
by
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There was the blond, forty-year-old, former Golden Gloves star from Michigan, tall, toothless, and reeling; the pimple-faced kid from the Chevron station, bug-eyed and laughing; a black guy with a flat-top haircut who was known for playing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" on the juke box at closing time; two dark-haired guys in jackets with trade union emblems; a handsome man with styled white hair; the administrative assistant from the Anthropology department at Peeze; the redhead who cut grass and drove snow plows for the town. There were hands waving and shoes stomping and more guys and smells of motor oil and whiskey and shaving lotion. Some of them were carrying in two two-by-fours, side by side, with a wood panel lashed on top, and Deanie saw the gold spike heels; the bare legs, the lashed-on chair; the gold-feathered G-string; the tassled nipple covers; and the live boa constrictor draped around the woman's shoulders. She was smiling, and her eyes were wide. Holding up the other end of the litter came Barett Burkhart and one of his drinking buddies, smiling from ear to ear, smiling one stretched-out smile from Barett's right ear all the way across to his buddy's left ear. Seeing the four of them at the bar, Barett and his buddy froze, and the smile rolled up under their mustaches like a snapped window shade More company," Kojo said. She could see Barett under the street light, sitting on his front fender, smoking a cigarette. "Hello," Barett said. He flipped the cigarette butt into the street. "Greetings, Barett," Kojo said. "Hi, Barett," she said. "Having a little night class?" Barett said, digging his fingers into his beard as if he was picking out burrs. "No night classes," Kojo said. "It's time to relax." Deanie figured Kojo was trying to size up Barett's mental state. "How did everything turn out at the Shamrock?" she asked. "What about earlier?" Barett asked. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I was talking to Professor Dedu," Barett said. "Earlier?" Kojo said. "Didn't you and Susan have a night class a little while ago?" "Susan stopped by just before Deanie got here," Kojo said. "Has something happened?" "Has something happened?" Barett said. He dropped his hands to the fender and slid off. "Something's going to happen. It's time somebody in the city checks out you and your buddies from the U.N." Barett slid his hand along the fender and carefully stepped around to the front of the station wagon. "I'd like to know what you're trying to do to our marriage." He slowly lifted his hand from the hood and brought it to rest on his side, over his ribs. "Well?"
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About the Book
Tom Gatten’s The Kojo Hand is a novel about people pursuing their dreams--mainly
a young woman in college and her friend and out-of-the classroom teacher Kojo
Dedu, a scholar from Ghana with a calling to produce positive social
change.
The story is told from the point
of view of Deanie Hollins, a nineteen-year-old student at a fictional
university on Long Island. The story
takes place in the spring and summer of 1972 and moves forward through
questions and answers raised by Kojo’s possible connection with a coup d’ etat in his homeland and by
Deanie’s part-time work as a model in New York City.
JD Reed, Senior Editor, Time Magazine, and author of Free Fall and Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, says of the manuscript: “The Kojo Hand is a wonderful novel. It’s a kind of Shane for baby-boomers with a neat twist. Making teacher and student different sexes is a fine touch. Kojo is a truly magnificent character. I wish I’d known him. The cast is great.”
John Stewart, Professor of
African-American and African Studies, Department of Anthropology, University of
California, Davis, and author of Last Cool Days, Curving Road, For
the Ancestors, and Looking for Josephine, says of the manuscript: “
. . . the range of experiences and the ways the characters persist in their world
are handled with considerable insight.
There are some nice things there.”
Dr. Marcellette G. Williams,
Interim Chancellor and Professor of English and Comparative Literature, The
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says of the manuscript: “Gatten's
handling of his female narrator's point of view is deft and refreshingly
"faithful to the grain" (to borrow from Kojo Dedu’s phrasing), as is
his handling of the narrator's feelings about love in her relationship with her
lover, managing even to "incorporate the knots into the overall
design."
About the Author
Tom Gatten’s fiction has appeared in such publications as Art and Literature (Lausanne), The Quest (New York), and Tales, formerly Fiction Midwest (St. Louis). His poems have appeared in numerous publications and have been anthologized in The Sumac Reader (The Michigan State University Press, East Lansing), and Earth, Air, Fire & Water (Coward, McCann & Geohegan, New York, and Longmans Canada Limited, Toronto). Mapper of Mists, poems and translations, includes the Spanish of Rafael Alberti. On the author’s writing prior to The Kojo Hand: "I think Tom Gatten’s Mapper of Mists is a remarkable book of poems. For years I’ve been familiar with Gatten’s work and here we have it together with a great deal of grace, intensity and energy. "Riding West on the Window Train," a long sequence and the core of the book, is especially durable and powerful. --Jim Harrison, whose books include the novels Dalva, Sundog, and Legends of the Fall, and such books of poems as Returning to Earth and The Theory & Practice of Rivers & Other Poems. Tom Gatten was born in north central Nebraska and grew up in southwestern Michigan. He was educated at Michigan State University, the University of the Americas in Mexico City, and the University of Iowa. He played for two years with the Bamboushay Steel Band (Folkways Records LP FS 3835). After Michigan State, he went to the University of Iowa, where he earned an M.F.A. His college teaching credits include Fresno, Stony Brook, Lincoln Land Community College, The University of Hartford and Penn State. He lives near Tampa, Florida, with his wife.