Heads of the Colored People: Stories

This a collection that has to be read as a whole. Individually, some of the stories feel too pat and distanced. But taken all together, the vision is much broader, especially if read as "sketches." Many are quick bits, often ironic, vicious at times to their characters. But this is not a somber book; it is not Black trauma porn. The characters get to have a range and the author uses a range of tones that often Black texts don't "get" to have. The overall effect is rich is a way individual stories aren't. It took me a while to get this. The last story pulls no punches and scared me and then left me hopeful.

A collection of short stories that aren't afraid to look at uncomfortable and sometimes painful experiences. I particularly found the stories on women's experience of mental health and illness really strong, from the woman trying to recover from childhood abuse to a desperately ill single mum trying to work out what will happen to her baby. African American experiences of racism in school, of aspirational middle class parents. In some of the stories characters reappear, and perspectives on earlier stories change. Read in June 2020, the first story packs a particular punch.

This is a debut collection of short stories, some of which have been published elsewhere. It's uneven but well worth reading. The first and last stories deal with black men shot by police and the effects on those around them. They involve more than that, but I found it interesting that we begin and end the collection with those, because most of the stories have very different emphases. It's as if the author was saying that we can't escape that reality, and she's right. Both are gut-punches in expected and unexpected ways, and I found them very effective.

The other stories that worked really well for me were the ones that featured Fatima, a young black girl and then woman who is one of only two black students in her majority-white show more private school in Southern California. We are introduced to her indirectly in an epistolary story in which the two mothers engage in escalating one-upmanship and hostility. I found this clever, but much more cruel than funny. But Fatima's own stories are fully of empathy, nuance, and complexity.

There is one other pair of connected stories which felt more like vignettes than full stories. The characters aren't well developed and they seem more designed to make a point than to illuminate the people in them. I found that to be a recurring issue in the rest of the collection. The author does write young women well; older women and men, not so much.

The writing is assured and stylish. It occasionally has that workshopped feel (one story's ending is shocking as you read it and then completely predictable in retrospect), but these stories *were* workshopped. I read in an interview that Fatima's stories began as a novella, and perhaps that's why they worked so well for me. There's just more there to engage with. show less

Could be spoilers.
OK. Some better, some worse. The first story sets a standard that is hard to match. The meta-story is interesting too, many of the characters are from the middle/upper class and they have the same issues as off of that age & class, and then the reality of being a person of color in the US adds other factors & dimensions.

I generally have a love/hate relationship with short story collections, and this was no different. Last up in my round-up of the James Tait Black shortlist for this year, this collection from Thompson-Spires includes some great writing, some poignant and important stories, but even dipping in and out there was just a sense of sameness as the stories went on.

Most successful, for me, were the title story, which really sets the tone for the collection, namely black and gender identity in modern America; Belles Lettres, which develops into a hilarious spat between two mothers exchanging letters about their daughters; and the final story, Wash Clean the Bones, which tackles the vexing issue of violence and crime amongst the young, as well as show more the trials of motherhood.

Certainly a worthy collection, with some little gems, but the surface just began to blend into a homogeneous study of modern-day life. All in all, fine - some nice little vignettes and character observations, but says it all in 2 or 3 stories, the rest being unremarkable. show less

These stories range from hilarious to satirical to touching, but all share a biting wit and skilled writing. I would love to see this as an anthology-type series on TV. Written by the author - I can't imagine anyone else doing them justice.

These short stories focus on the struggles of middle- and upper-middle-class blacks, who don't fit into what we stereotypically think of black society and who aren't accepted into white society. Many characters appear in more than one story, which I enjoyed. A great read.