What a fantastic title! We Love Anderson Cooper is the title and a line in R. L. Maizes first short story in her collection, a parental response to their thirteen-year-old son's inability to be frank about his sexual orientation until he chooses the absolute wrong moment to out himself. He imagined it all going down differently. It is hilarious and heartbreaking.
"We love Anderson Cooper" therefore you should know I would accept you. Does it really follow? 'I'm not prejudiced' --fill in the blank for any person or idea. Isn't that what we do? I have black friends/gay friends/lesbian buddies/Muslim or Jewish or Christian or Hindu friends. How can you think I am prejudiced?
Geez, guys, just tell your son you love him!
Oh, we do love to feel superior to people who struggle and fail when we know what they should do. And these stories are filled with folk whose actions don't make sense to us.
And yet it is the best they can do.
We are all doing our best, and the even most wise and centered and rich and sane of us can find ourselves veering off into the gray and cloudy areas, just like the people in these stories where animals hold special places in people's lives and magical abilities and influences sway lives and jealousy and change brings division. We laugh, we feel empathetic pain, we recognize social and cultural truths.
Maya spent fourteen years caring for her employer-turned-lover and at his death found herself unprovided for. His kids dismissed her without a thought. Now she has to find her own way.
A talented artist whose art isn't selling becomes a tattoo artist and finds not only success but perhaps the ability to not only alter but to change lives.
A mid-life Jewish man is jealous when his cat prefers his lover. Worse yet, she is suddenly introducing Christmas into his life--cookies and trees and carols--and the cat likes it. "This is how assimilation begins--with baked goods," he thinks.
After her father's early death, Charlotte's mother gets a bird and transfers her affection to it. The sin of omission is strong in Charlotte's life.
At the last minute, a bride stops her wedding.
A couple are adopted by a sometimes vicious feral cat which their daughter adores and imitates. The parents are at loggerheads over the cat's place in the family.
A man is relieved when he losses his high-pressure, lucrative job. His wife can't believe he is happy delivering pizza. He can't convince her to downsize their life.
A therapist's heirloom couch breaks and seems irreplaceable. She finds the 'right' one, which affects her clients in a positive way.
A girl adores her aunt but is jealous of her aunt's adoration of her son. She gets even in a very dark way.
After nursing her ill husband, the loss of their dogs causes him to leave her.
These are memorable characters.
I read a copy purchased by my local library at my request.
We Love Anderson Cooper
by R. L. Maizes
Celadon Books
On Sale: 07/23/2019
ISBN: 9781250304094
hardcover $11.99
from the publisher:In this quirky, humorous, and deeply human short story collection, Pushcart Prize-nominated author R.L. Maizes reminds us that even in our most isolated moments, we are never truly alone.
In We Love Anderson Cooper, characters are treated as outsiders because of their sexual orientation, racial or religious identity, or simply because they look different. A young man courts the publicity that comes from outing himself at his bar mitzvah. When a painter is shunned because of his appearance, he learns to ink tattoos that come to life. A paranoid Jewish actuary suspects his cat of cheating on him—with his Protestant girlfriend.
In this debut collection, humor complements pathos. Readers will recognize themselves in these stories and in these protagonists, whose backgrounds are vastly different from their own—we’ve all been outsiders at some point.
about the author R.L. Maizes was born and raised in Queens, New York, and now lives in Boulder County, Colorado. Maizes's short stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in the literary magazines Electric Literature, Witness, Bellevue Literary Review, Slice, and Blackbird, among others. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lilith, and elsewhere.
Maizes is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop. Her work has received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open contest, has been a finalist in numerous other national contests, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. We Love Anderson Cooper: Short Stories is her first book.
