Edward P. Jones and Geo-Tagging Black Short Fiction

By Kenton Rambsy 

In the second phase of the Mellon Foundation grant supporting the Black Lit Network, we are expanding efforts to make Black-authored texts more discoverable by turning from novels and circulation patterns to short fiction, with a focus on identifying narrative features that shape Black short stories—beginning with geography through literary geo-tagging, also known as cultural geo-tagging.

My work on Black short fiction began with Edward P. Jones. His detailed rendering of Washington, DC in his short story collections Lost in the City (1992) and All Aunt Hagar’s Children (2006) led me to develop literary geo-tagging as a method for identifying and documenting the many locations embedded in his stories. I recorded more than 200 references to neighborhoods, streets, landmarks, and housing complexes, tracing how Jones plots the city and how urban change reshaped the spaces that appear in his fiction.

Cultural geo-tagging allowed me to measure the range and frequency of spatial references, revealing how Jones constructs cultural space through physical detail and regional specificity. The challenge emerged when I attempted to compare Jones to other writers. Many Black short story writers rely less on named coordinates and more on recurring interior environments such as kitchens, bedrooms, storefronts, and neighborhood corners. Tracking only mapped locations would privilege one form of spatial precision over another.

This realization pushed me to refine the dataset, since geography alone could not fully explain how space functions in short fiction, where settings gain meaning through the people who occupy them and the conversations that unfold within them. To extend the project responsibly, I expanded the model beyond geography, recognizing that literary space emerges through multiple narrative features rather than location alone. What began as literary geo-tagging centered on Jones evolved into a broader annotation structure that includes geography, dialogue, and character demographics, creating a comparative framework that makes Black short fiction more legible, analyzable, and accessible.

Related:

• The Black Short Story Project