What We Don't Talk About
Published: 2022, University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-299-34004-9
Availability: University of Wisconsin Press | Organic Books | Pilsen Community Books | Bookworks
Under cover of night, things aren’t always as they seem.
Orville, Illinois, is bucolic, charming, and almost Norman Rockwellesque—if you’re white. But like many midwestern cities in the 1960s, it is a “sundown” town—a place where Black Americans are prohibited from entering or remaining after dark.
The town’s most adventurous woman, Cassie Zeul, is an outcast because she has no husband and takes an occasional lover. Her son, Gus, guided by Sister Damien, aspires to be a priest, but he is increasingly overwhelmed by his infatuation with Pat Lemkey—who is herself drawn to Jenny Biel, considered by many to be the most beautiful girl in town. Gus’s best friend, Fenza Ryzchik Jr., a somewhat notorious bully desperate for his father’s attention, hates “colored people,” doesn’t think he knows any, and is certain he can convince Jenny to marry him one day—without realizing that her devout mother has been passing for white her entire life. Events come to a head when a visiting nun from the South brings an African American friend with her to Midnight Mass one Christmas Eve.
The dreams and desires of these characters collide and intersect as they navigate life and coming of age in the rural Midwest. In Janko’s masterful hands, the darkness—of prejudice, privilege, and power—that they don’t even recognize threatens to overwhelm their lives and their plans for the future. This novel forces us, as well as its characters, to acknowledge the cost of hiding our true selves, and of judging others based on the color of their skin or the longing of their hearts.
Praise for What We Don’t Talk About
“With its theme of prejudice, privilege and power in Midwest America, What We Don’t Talk About by James Janko is a timely (given the present and pressing social issues of being Black in America) and a deftly crafted novel by an author with a genuine flair for revealing the dramatic in the mundane…What We Don’t Talk About is one of those thought-provoking works of literary fiction that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf.”
—Midwest Book Review
“James Janko’s What We Don’t Talk About is an enticing work of fiction… As the title hints, the book deals with unspoken––indeed at times unspeakable––issues townspeople hardly whisper in public…The author’s power of language will magnetize the reader throughout…”
—Albuquerque Journal
“Reading What We Don’t Talk About is like looking inside a snow globe, and seeing a country town in America’s heartland at Christmastime…Janko’s miraculous writing connects us readers to those people in Orville, and all of us to all others. Every good thing we do, and every bad, affects the whole world.”
—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior
“The setting in What We Don’t Talk About—a small, rural town in the 1960s—establishes the tone and mood for this engaging slice-of-life book…It is one of thousands of ‘sundown towns’ where Black people are not welcome once the sun goes down…Each character is interesting in their own right, but when they combine, dynamic scenes and engaging prose make the story even more compelling.”
—Windy City Reviews