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The All-Girl Football Team
Short stories portray the experiences of Sugar Mecklin and the other inhabitants of a small town in Mississippi
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Lewis Nordan
26 books74 followersFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 4, 2014
I consider myself a Nordan fan, but this collection of stories was terribly disappointing. They meandered around a bit but essentially went nowhere. Even side-show freaks and eunuchs running amuck couldn't make these tales memorable. Sigh.
January 4, 2008
Often, to me, Nordan feels like a guilty pleasure, like the Phantom Tollbooth or something pitched far below an adult reading level. But then . . . his timing is too flawless, his characters too lovingly and believably drawn, his dialect too memorable and his bizarreness too unexpected for me to give him the gold star of "good subway reading" and move on. He might actually be a good writer.
"John Thomas Bird" and "The All-Girl Football Team" are the obvious success stories of the collection and "The Farmers' Daughter" is the fumble.
I can't tell (yet) what portion of the enjoyment I get from this man's stories comes from the fact that I have now read four novels worth of his effort to create one, stable, well-populated fictional counterpart to Yawknapawtapha county.
Nordan focuses exclusively on the marginal, uneducated, strange, dysfunctional, innocent and lovable sort of folks that American novels are so agonizingly filled with. But he does it better than any other American author that I have read. He does it without constant self-conscious and self-congratulatory cultural and literary references and without deploying any wry, triumphant, hyper-aware characters; he is also not burdened with an agenda (at least his agenda doesn't seem to go beyond hoping that his readers will become less condemning of gender confused young men).
If you don't like the two stories I singled out above, don't bother reading anything else by Nordan. If you do enjoy them, he has filled hundreds and hundreds of pages with material you might have trouble defending your taste for.
"John Thomas Bird" and "The All-Girl Football Team" are the obvious success stories of the collection and "The Farmers' Daughter" is the fumble.
I can't tell (yet) what portion of the enjoyment I get from this man's stories comes from the fact that I have now read four novels worth of his effort to create one, stable, well-populated fictional counterpart to Yawknapawtapha county.
Nordan focuses exclusively on the marginal, uneducated, strange, dysfunctional, innocent and lovable sort of folks that American novels are so agonizingly filled with. But he does it better than any other American author that I have read. He does it without constant self-conscious and self-congratulatory cultural and literary references and without deploying any wry, triumphant, hyper-aware characters; he is also not burdened with an agenda (at least his agenda doesn't seem to go beyond hoping that his readers will become less condemning of gender confused young men).
If you don't like the two stories I singled out above, don't bother reading anything else by Nordan. If you do enjoy them, he has filled hundreds and hundreds of pages with material you might have trouble defending your taste for.
May 3, 2025
An utterly remarkable collection, its brilliance left me with whiplash.
February 13, 2012
Something of a mixed bag of short fiction, Lewis Nordan's The All-Girl Football Team is a slim volume of stories about the south. Taken as a whole, it's an uneven and slightly off-kilter collection, with the individual stories ranging from decent to good.
Several of them, including this collection's two best stories - the title story and Sugar Among the Chickens - take place in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town that's something like a Lynch movie: a trailer of dwarfs next door, Episcopalians roaming around the country in a van and a mom who invents lives for models in a Sears catalogue. These are the most off-center of Nordan's stories and they're all slightly connected, with references often getting repeated between stories (perhaps a draft of a novel?) These stories are the best part of this book, showing Nordan's gift for mixing the absurd with the dark: there are odd stories that flip from being funny to depressing without changing a beat.
The rest of the book isn't quite as good, though, and keeps this from getting a higher rating. Not really recommended, but you could do worse when looking for a short story collection.
Several of them, including this collection's two best stories - the title story and Sugar Among the Chickens - take place in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town that's something like a Lynch movie: a trailer of dwarfs next door, Episcopalians roaming around the country in a van and a mom who invents lives for models in a Sears catalogue. These are the most off-center of Nordan's stories and they're all slightly connected, with references often getting repeated between stories (perhaps a draft of a novel?) These stories are the best part of this book, showing Nordan's gift for mixing the absurd with the dark: there are odd stories that flip from being funny to depressing without changing a beat.
The rest of the book isn't quite as good, though, and keeps this from getting a higher rating. Not really recommended, but you could do worse when looking for a short story collection.
September 28, 2010
I was on an all-girl football team that was much more fun than this.
September 20, 2025
The last story is GREAT.
December 6, 2010
Nordan reminds me of O'Connor in this collection. He knows that normal is only an idea, that everyone is a freak in some way and it is in examining that freakishness that the most universal aspects of humanity can be revealed. All of these stories are very good, but "Sugar Among the Chickens" is almost brilliant. The title alone. The story is full of one hysterical line after another. The story doesn't rely on them to work, but they make the story just that much more amazing. I mean, where do you get lines like "I had been fishing for an hour and still hadn't caught anything. I was fishing for chickens." Gold. Absolute gold.
September 24, 2011
The first half of this collection focuses on the adventures of southern junior Sugar Mecklin while the second is made up of varied stories each with its own set of characters. Some of the Sugar stories were a bit boring but otherwise Nordan managed to make me grin, snigger and feel physically grossed out as I made my way through this slender volume. Essential stories are 'John Thomas Bird' and of course 'The All-Girl Football Team'- not just a ripper title but so arresting I had a dream about it the night after reading. With a fair blend of unpredictability and harmony across the stories it’s worthwhile tracking down despite its flaws.
February 1, 2011
Short story collections are difficult for me since you should really rate them as a whole...not just one or two that stick out. I loved a couple liked a few and didn't like one. So I suppose that means I liked it? I usually done care for short stories (with a few exceptions) I just want to read anything I can find by Mr. Nordan.
February 24, 2008
My friend Nathaniel Calhoun recommended this book, and I concur that it is a treasure. The narrative detail of the stories reminds me of my brother Tom's work, and I hope that some of my "speechies" will use the story for competition pieces.
November 19, 2013
The opening story, "Sugar Among the Chickens", is amazing. I would have to rank it among my favorite short stories of all time. Very well written and very, very funny. The remainder of the book, however, does not compare.
February 20, 2008
The Sugar stories stand out far beyond the rest, and for good reason. Still, this is a great collection.
December 2, 2008
good if you were a girl if they play football or just want to play just one game of football.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews