CRiTiCiSM  

Kann’s younger characters are shockingly genuine, a beautiful mix of joyous, irreverent, uncomfortable, and afraid. I want to hand her book to every kid I see in order to show them that what they’re feeling isn’t abnormal and they aren’t alone. Her dialogue reminds me of Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius because she uses language that actually flows from our mouths instead of the flowery verbiage usually delivered on the page. In “Therapy,” a 16 year-old pregnant girl—who self-mutilates while in a juvenile facility—says of her baby’s disinterested paternal grandparents, “I don’t give a fuck about that. I don’t want his bitchass parents touching my baby anyway.” There are no dramatic After School Special interventions over the girl’s self-abuse. The story is told clearly through the heart and eyes of this girl and, like those who work with kids in real world, we’re left wondering if she’ll ever be on solid ground. Kann tells the tenacious story behind those syrupy, tragic tales spun by nonprofits looking for your dollars to help the poor, wounded children; yet, she never exploits her characters’ wounds, but respects them as a common thread among us all.

I also want every single woman who aches for love and has cringed in horror over some dramatic display to read Kann’s stories. They might understand that they aren’t insane. Women are frequently shamed into never admitting the self-doubt that plagues us in a culture where we are constantly bombarded by messages of inadequacy, which often teach us to make wretched choices or skew our perception to the point where we assume the worst. Kann’s characters are wide open, exposing the silent doubt so common: “The truth is that even whole, you are inadequate. You are never enough. Not skinny enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not good enough.” In reality, Kann’s characters are always enough, and she whispers this same message to us through each story.

Conversely, in “Backing Out,” Kann peeks behind the curtain of an all too familiar (to straight women) stereotype: the asshole male. But, true to her perspective, Kann fleshes him into a three dimensional human being. She provides a glimpse into his brokenness by not only demonstrating his perception of why he intentionally hurts women, but also by exploring his guilt at doing so and his misogyny: “It’s like…Darlene made it too easy. Too easy not to put in the effort, you know? I feel bad for females. I honestly do.” Kann exposes the kind of hatred that boils beneath the skin of so many men but is seldom confessed. Kann’s characters are never black and white, never convenient.

           Her characters, however, are beautiful. In “Wesley,” a cross dressing gay man who identifies as both male and female, falls in love with a gorgeous man. In an intense moment, Wesley describes how the man guided “her palm to his chest, placed it on the taut flesh right over his heart…[so she] could feel the sun caught there, the warmth of outside in the skin, the gold of it all.”

Kann’s piercing truth telling resonates throughout 10 for Everything. The stories weave together in songs of wanting and hope, without providing tidy answers and comfortable, predictable story lines. Kann leaves you wanting—wanting the stories to continue and wanting to know the ultimate outcome of each character’s dilemma. But, like our lives, the answers are never given. What is offered is the quiet acknowledgement that those raw, vulnerable places that we try so desperately to hide hold beauty and promise. 10 for Everything gives us permission to be imperfectly human, allowing the reader to relax stiffened shoulders and weary hearts with the understanding that life and love are not the glossy images we’re fed but something deeper and more genuine.