He pulls no punches and simply confronts the vissitudes of race in America head on. This is the era of Jim Crow, a time when lynching was all too frequent in the South and blase attitudes and lip service was omnipresent in the North. Thus everyday life was tainted by the pathologies of race relations and from this springs forth the . The writing style is spare and ironic and each story leaves a sting; it’s never overwrought. There’s high life and low life, every social sphere is observed. I found myself shaking my head at once, laughing out loud at other times and clutching the book as the tension mounted on occasion. Beautiful and lyrical prose everywhere. The title may be the ways of white folks but it could as well be the ways of black folks.