A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times Literary Elements

Short story collection, immigration fiction

The stories are set in the United States and Ethiopia, particularly in the cities of Addis Ababa, New York, and Los Angeles

The stories are told from a mixture of first and third-person points of view. In stories like "Mekonnen aka Mack aka Huey Freakin' Newton," the first-person narrator is the protagonist, while in other stories like "A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times" the narrator is an anonymous third person.

The tone is caring and insightful. The mood is anxious and uncertain.

Each story has a different protagonist. Some protagonists include Mekonnen, Saba, Getu, and Yohannes.

The major conflict in the stories is the characters' struggles to build and maintain happy lives in the face of the forces of oppression and change, be it racial violence, immigration, or dictatorial rule.

While each story has its own individual climax, the collection as a whole seems to build to the last story, in which an unnamed narrator attends the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The old man nearly being robbed is foreshadowed by the eerie atmosphere of the park, as it is described at the beginning of "The Thief's Tale."

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The collection alludes to various historical events like the inauguration of Barack Obama, the 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, the 2020 global pandemic, and the Derg in Ethiopia

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