this was just the second story, “Snakes,” and thenpages of Wingdings, I would still give this five.
But fortunately the other seven stories are also pretty much perfect, Danielle Evans could write copy for Vons coupons and Id treasure them, because somehow even those would be clear and bold and perceptive and sensitive and structurally elegant.
Easily my favorite book Ive read in months and maybe my favorite story collection ever I think I liked this even more than The Office of Historical Corrections which also, like, omg.
First, I hate short stories, Had I known when I picked this book up that it was a collection of short stories, I never would have done so.
I read the second story thinking that it was the second chapter and struggled to find some kind of common thread linking it to the first "chapter".
Never happened. Naturally. However, having said all this, I found that I couldn't put this book down,
I chose this book randomly because the title spoke to me, As a ParisiandwellingnativeofVirginia you can take the girl out of Virginia but you can't take the Virginia out of the girl!, that title jumped out at me.
This is the English of my childhooda combination of AfricanAmerican/rural white dialectand as I read the title, I could actually hear it being said, with that Southern accent and intonation, in my head.
Spooky. I found the dialogue so, so perfect, so authentic, so "there", I felt that I knew these people, Danielle Evans succeeded in capturing the subtle flavor of Southern thinking, that unique exchange between people in the South that is so hard to put into words.
Bravo! sitelink blog sitelink tumblr sitelinkkofi
½
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is a fantastic collection of short stories.
Having loved Evans' latest release, The Office of Historical Corrections, I had high hopes for this first collection and it did not disappoint.
Each short story delivers, there isn't one 'weak' or boring story, Although they explore similar themes and subjects they offer different perspectives and or they reach contrasting conclusions, Evans' combines heartrendering scenes with more lighthearted ones, and delivers her sharp commentaryon race, class, gender, sexualitywith a delightful side of humour.
I truly enjoyed this collection and I hope Evans will soon be publishing something new,.rounded down
A brilliant collection of eight short stories on coming of age instcentury America.
“My Youth as Real Live Tragic Mulatta,” sums it up nicely, “Snakes” the story ofyear old Tara who gets sent to her white grandmother in Tallahassee hit unexpectedly close to home.
What is most appealing about Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is Evanss ability to weave race into her stories without having it be the entire focus of characters lives.
The first two short stories in this collection
literally had me making noises on my couch, Throughout Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans shares the pains, intimacies, and moments of disconnection that make adolescence and young adulthood so rife with feeling.
In the first story, “Virgins,” I literally laughed so hard at the dialogue, before experiencing a quiet yet profound sadness at the ways in which the young female narrator comes to understand the many degrees of danger for girls just trying to exist in the world.
I appreciated how, throughout this collection, Evans focuses on the interior lives of Black girls, some of whom are biracial, without making their entire narratives solely about their race.
When I read the second story, “Snakes,” Im pretty sure I actually screamed out loud at the ending idk if Im a mediocre book reviewer for relying on descriptions of me ejecting noise from my mouth to pump up the hype, but whatever.
“Snakes” follows a young biracial nineyearold, Tara, whos dropped off at her white grandmothers house by her parents for an entire summer Taras mother fell out of touch with Taras grandmother a while ago and, in Taras view, offers Taras summer visit as a “peace offering” of sorts.
This freaking short story had everything: a vulnerable, perceptive, and consistent narrator, complicated yet understandable parental dynamics transmitted across generations, subtle and effectivelyplaced commentary on race, omgthisissogood level foreshadowing, and an ending that almost got me as shaken as when I hear the bridge of BlackPinks song “Lovesick Girls.
” I feel like short stories that can win me over almost impress me more than novels given the shorter page length eliciting a commensurate amount of emotional payoff.
“Snakes” accomplished that feat and I please recommend you read the collection just so we can fanhuman the freak out about it afterward.
The rest of the stories felt more in the,range for me, perhaps because of how much I absolutely loved “Snakes” and enjoyed “Virgins, ” Evans embodies each story with nuanced takes on the insecurities that accompany coming of age and the ruptures and repairs that can occur within family relationships.
While these later stories felt interesting, none of them felt as definitive as the first two stories, I walked away from each one thinking something along the lines of like, “well that was interesting angst” and “lol well I hope X character figures their life out at some point.
” I dont feel like I wanted more resolution as much as I wanted each of the later stories to make more of an impact.
Recommended for those interested in short stories, Evanss writing reminded me of sitelink Caucasia by Danzy Senna, one of my favorite books I read this year, as well as the amazing short story I read during my undergraduate education weird af that my undergrad days were over three years ago now, lol, “Brownies” by ZZ Packer, whose full collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere I still want to read.
Evans published another collection this year which I am excited to read soon! My favorite book of the year.
It was such a satisfying, wellwritten collection with these awesome stories I keep wanting to read over and over again.
"I didn't feel anymore like being myself was something for which I owed the world an apology, "
That brilliant quote, ladies and gentleman, is from Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
Specifically from my favorite story, Robert E, Lee is dead. I related to this story the most, because I too felt ostracized for being the smart black girl and quiet.
All of the stories were great and really made you think about life, the human condition and how our view on life greatly affects how we live.
At first I was under the impression that these were essays by different people on their experiences, until I see the "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer.
I couldn't believe one person, Danielle Evans, was able to tell eight different stories that felt so real.
Even if I personally didn't go through what each character went through, I empathized with them so greatly,
One thing I noticed in review for this book were about the endings, Yes, not every ending was clear or the story had a lot of ambiguity, but life is all about no clear ending.
And you don't immediately get a happyeverafter, You have to overcome personal hurdles before you get that luxury just like the characters in this book,
Every story in here is interesting and really makes you think about the people in your life and how the characters deals with their problems and makes you wonder: would I do that Have I Will I
I was feeling, feelings reading this book! I'm so glad I gave this a chance.
It's a great comingofage book, for all races, I'm sure many adults will be reminiscent of their adolescent or new adult years while reading,
One last thing: I had been going through a reading funk and was told to read something completely different than what I've previously read.
This was my first short story book and I have to say I'm now a fan of short stories.
For anyone going through a reading funk,explore all kinds of options:
My personal faves were:
Robert E.
Lee Is Dead
Virgins
Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go
The King of the Vast Empire
Jelly Fish
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I love this book! Recommended read! I hope Danielle Evans is a very nice person because that might be her only defense against other writers' seething envy.
At, this D. C. area author has already graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, earned praise from Salman Rushdie and Richard Russo, and appeared in two two! volumes of "Best American Short Stories.
" Now comes the publication of her first collection, "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," eight quietly devastating stories that validate the hype.
No, she's not the America's Next Top Model of the same name that would just be too much but she's captivating in a far more profound way.
Lorrie Moore, one of the country's finest short story writers, recently said that she considered the form inherently melancholy, and that's an apt appraisal of Evans's work, though her stories are flecked with humor, too.
As an African American who grew up in Baileys Crossroads, she writes about black teenagers and college students sometimes older, occasionally male who live in a country still largely determined by race but tired of talking about it.
The tensions of interracial dating are private now, and blacks work confidently as lawyers and professors, even as they search out black landlords who won't hassle them.
The civil rights protests of their grandparents' era have settled into wry jokes and sarcastic realism,
That attitude energizes a rueful story called "Harvest" about a group of Columbia University students, These young black women see ads in the campus newspaper offering up to,for human eggs, but they know wellheeled couples don't want their genetic material, no matter how high their SATs or how healthy their bodies.
"Columbia credentials be damned," says the narrator, "If they had wanted brown babies who so obviously didn't belong to them, they would have just adopted, " Even as the story appears to glide along with no more direction than the flow of dormroom gossip, it quickly develops into an unsettling reflection on the calculus of race, sex and commerce before arriving at a moment of compromise that's as intimate as it is disturbing.
That technique, the surprising dodge of moral responsibility that casts a character into deep regret and reevaluation, works well in almost all these stories.
The first one, "Virgins," is a deceptively casual tale of sexual initiation told by ayearold girl in, Evans, who teaches creative writing at American University, brings us right into the overconfident patter of these bored, anxious teens, kids who know sunscreen lotion is a white conspiracy, who know they deserve vastly more exciting lives, who know they can handle even the most dangerous situations.
The narrator, Erica, resembles many of the people in this collection: She's smart but confused by the rules of teen life eager to fit in, but conscious that she doesn't.
Seeing a slutty girl at a bar, Erica says, "I wondered how you got to be a girl like that.
Did you care too much what other people thought, or did you stop caring" By the end of this powerful story, she gets a disturbing sense of just how far adrift she really is.
English teachers still assigning John Knowles's "A Separate Peace" why why could enrich their classroom discussion by comparing it to Evans's "Snakes.
" It's a rich, shocking story about ayearold black girl sent to spend the summer with her wealthy white grandmother in Tallahassee.
On the grounds of the estate, the young narrator cavorts with a muchfavored cousin under the increasingly displeased eye of their toxic grandmother, who warns the girls of maneating pythons in the lake.
Like Ian McEwan's "Atonement," it's a story about longing and what vengeance a young girl can set in motion.
You'll never experience its revelation the same way you did the first time, but it rewards in other ways on repeat readings.
Evans's greatest talent is her ability to create poignant moments of crisis in the lives of transient people who can't seem to connect with those they love.
How quietly and easily the barriers between us are reinforced, In "Jellyfish," Eva waits eagerly for her father at a restaurant with the sense "that anyone could just by looking at her see that she did not belong to anyone, anywhere.
Where once she'd taken her selfsufficiency for granted, somewhere in a dizzying string of morning afters she had started to feel her aloneness was a mark of incompletion, faintly spreading.
" And yet, when her father arrives, so eager to help her, to embrace her, he feels that "her whole life was an elaborate series of barricades against him.
"
If there's some tonal and thematic redundancy in this collection, it's counterbalanced by such arresting stories as "Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go.
" Set in the Washington area, the story involves an Iraq vet who comes home to discover as he expected that his girlfriend has moved in with a new guy.
Determined to behave kindly and stay in her life any way he can, he volunteers to babysit heryearold daughter.
And what's the harm if this little one wants to call him "Daddy" As a story of chronic alienation and posttraumatic stress, it's affecting and sweet, moving toward a tragicomic crisis that leaves this young vet staring into the conundrum of his intractable loneliness.
Again and again, without any histrionics, but with a clear appreciation for the natural drama of our mundane lives, Evans frames such questions in a way that will resonate with any thoughtful reader.
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