Naming the New World

Reading Calvin Baker's debut novel, Naming the New World, is like glancing through a family photo album. Each short chapter is like a snapshot capturing a moment in time. Beginning in the past with Ampofo, fresh from the hold of a cargo ship, and ending in the present with Brenndan awaiting his execution on death row, Baker weaves a short history of African Americans in the New World.

Baker's attempt to cover the whole of black experience in the United States from slavery to the crack epidemic in only 118 pages bespeaks a rare courage--some might say audacity. The strength of his subject matter and the skill of his writing serve to highlight the major weakness in this novel: there just isn't enough of it.