Training School for Negro Girls (2018)by Camille Acker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Training School for Negro Girls (2018)

by Camille Acker

4716 16th Street NW, Washington, District of Columbia

Washington DC: 1/12

   I went to undergraduate/college in Washington DC, at The American University.  Not the best university but I wasn't good enough to get into anyplace first-rate and they offered me a full scholarship so I took it.  AU is located in Northwest DC, i.e. the white part, and that part of DC is hardly represented in the twelve titles selected to represent the District within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project. This book is mapped just over the border from Northeast DC, a traditionally middle-class African American area but it is one of only two books set in Northwest.  Anyway, Training School for Negro Girls is a collection of short-stories. 

  If I had to characterize a theme for this collection it would be striving- all of these characters are trying to do something in their lives.  It was refreshing after reading so many struggle n' trauma driven books.  Not that these characters don't suffer their own trauma, but it's typically in pursuit of an actual goal:  Winning a children's piano competition, trying to help a neighborhood business, joining an exclusive African American social club.   This book by itself already distinguishes itself from the many African American titles from New York City- not one of which had an ounce of the hope or ambition of any of these characters.