Summary

Joy Boothe’s short story ”Jesse” is a story about how the narrator came to name her son Jesse. The story takes place over the course of 22 years; it begins when the narrator is 5 years old and ends with a more grown up frame of reference when the narrator is 27 years old and pregnant with a son. The story begins with her childish animosity towards the name Jesse accompanied by a story about her great uncle: a drunk who killed himself right in front of her Aunt Nanny.

As the story moves on, it jumps in time and we are told her age throughout. In the second paragraph, the narrator is eight years old, and her father and his co-worker Jesse are introduced.  The father and Jesse work together at a plywood mill, and as the two men are described, we get the impression that she is fond of both her father and Jesse. Jesse cannot come into their home, because he is black.

The next paragraph is longer and we get a detailed sense of the setting in which the stor...