Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Book Reviews
Magee, Kelly. Body Language. Denton, TX: University of North
Texas Press, 2006. 197 pages. $12.95.
Kelly Magee’s Body Language, the 2006 winner of the Katherine Anne
Porter Prize in Short Fiction, contains stories about a wide range of
characters, most of whom are lower-class and marginalized Americans
whose voices go unheard amongst the louder majority voices of society,
and who, for that reason, rely more on their actions than their words to
communicate their deepest feelings.
This theme is most evident in the title story, in which the ten-yearold
protagonist, Lucha, the daughter of Hispanic migrant farm workers,
struggles to fit in at school due to her inability to speak English clearly
and her propensity for hitting her classmates, which she does “because it
is the one language in which she can make herself perfectly understood.”
Indeed, the character’s name (which is a conjugated form of the Spanish
verb luchar, “to fight”) sums this up, almost too neatly. And while such
neatness might make the character seem overly reductive or allegorical
in some authors’ hands, Magee’s rich depiction of Lucha as a young girl
struggling to define her place within her family, her peer group, and
her often-changing communities moves the character beyond mere
symbolism and makes her a living person with whom most readers will
be able to identify and sympathize.
Lucha isn’t the only character in this collection who resorts to
violence as a form of communication. In “All the America You Want,”
a group of Hispanic youths who find themselves and their families
displaced by South Tampa’s urban renewal efforts futilely communicates
their frustration via arson. In “The Business of Souls,” the nine-yearold
narrator, Matt, lives with his sister and his ex-paratrooper father,
who teaches his children to land on their feet—both figuratively and
literally—by regularly requiring them to jump off the roof of their trailer.
Matt survives as one of the smallest members of his class by taking his
sister’s advice: “hit first.” And in “As Human as You Are Standing Here,”
Leo, a pre-operative transgendered male who can’t afford the medical
treatment that will fully transform him into a woman, and Gypsy, a
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