Heads of the Colored People in Around the Year in 52 Books

Jan 09, 2020 Marta rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-author, book-club, contemporary, race, poc-author

This is not my normal fare, as I read very few short stories and contemporary fiction. This was our book club’s selection. While I can’t say I enjoyed it much (see previous sentence), I found it thought provoking, well written, and unusual.

The stories all feature African American characters, and deal with issues of identity and belonging. The first and last story is about violence against black people, and the impact of the possibility of unexpected violent death, which effects not just those gu This is not my normal fare, as I read very few short stories and contemporary fiction. This was our book club’s selection. While I can’t say I enjoyed it much (see previous sentence), I found it thought provoking, well written, and unusual.

The stories all feature African American characters, and deal with issues of identity and belonging. The first and last story is about violence against black people, and the impact of the possibility of unexpected violent death, which effects not just those gunned down, but everyone who loves them. “How can you protect him?” asks the desperate mother of a toddler in the last story.

The rest are universal stories of finding one’s identity, with race mostly as a factor for otherness. Several characters are highly educated and feel like outsiders among mostly white colleagues, or in one case, being the only man among women. One is a nerd who like comics and dyes his hair blond. Some struggle with mental issues, or anger resulting from trauma. The girl who goes to an all white school is trying to learn how to be black; the only other black girl at school bullies her...

The writing is good, and Thompson-Spires draws excellent characters in the confines of the short form. She also experiments with style and point of view. I enjoyed the meta-ness of the first and the last before last story. I did not like, however, her using three very different formats for the three stories about the girl Fatima. The story about Fatima and Violet was one of the bests, however.

I would also like to point out that after reading Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death, I am pretty sure that no coroner will ever give you the femur of your brother, no matter how good a friend he/she is. It is against corpse desecration laws. Not to mention allowing you to clean it yourself. This makes for a macabre detail, but rather loses the credibility of the story.

The stories are uneven. Some stories feel unfinished - like the mothers who engage in an increasingly vicious feud in letters become suddenly friends, and we are not told how. Several stories are about pettiness, or characters who lack self-awareness, and I really don’t like reading about people who blame others for their own problems, and engage in small-minded games.

I am glad I read it, but I would not have picked it up on my own. ...more

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Feb 26, 2021 Meera rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, scribd, african-american, short-stories, poc-author

I quite enjoyed listening to this collection of short stories and the narrator was excellent. Her narration really brought out the dark humor underlying most of the stories. Because I was listening, I wasn't able to keep track of the interconnectedness of some of the stories but I didn't think I really lost anything from that. I really liked the complex characters (some likable and some not so) that showed up in these stories. ...more

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Feb 26, 2021 Jacqie rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley, sirens-2021, popsugar-2021

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.

Popsugar 2021: a book in a format you don't normally read (short story collection)

I blazed through this book in an evening. I don't know if I've really digested it yet. The first story, from which the book's title comes, is one of the more experimental stories. It starts with a young man heading to ComiCon in LA and ends with two chalk outlines on the sidewalk. It doesn't so much break the fourth wall as peek over it, wink, and the Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.

Popsugar 2021: a book in a format you don't normally read (short story collection)

I blazed through this book in an evening. I don't know if I've really digested it yet. The first story, from which the book's title comes, is one of the more experimental stories. It starts with a young man heading to ComiCon in LA and ends with two chalk outlines on the sidewalk. It doesn't so much break the fourth wall as peek over it, wink, and then take a sledgehammer to it. It happened so fast that my feelings couldn't quite catch up with it.

The author says that "If you are a black nerd, or a blerd — or love or care about black nerds — then this book is for you. And even if you don’t, then you probably need to read this book so you can develop some empathy for those characters." I loved her characters and her wicked sense of humor.

There's a story that's entirely made up of letters between two mothers sent in their children's backpacks which starts with politely barbed nastiness and degenerates into something far more street. The author then takes one of the daughters from this story and puts her in a couple more stories of her own, one of which takes place in a yoga class as this daughter, Fatima, ruminates upon her struggles with her body image. The author links a couple of stories through characters in this way. In one story a woman slowly reveals herself by talking about her boyfriends until the reader understands that she's got a fetish for men who have been physically damaged. In a later story, her first boyfriend, who ended up with a restraining order against this woman, works on an essay for his graduate anthropology program with another Black classmate. The two of them can't figure out how to write an enthographic paper without having it feel like it plays into stereotypes, because when you're writing a snapshot then each character ends up as a representative of its race, identity group, etc. I think this is the theme that the author really wants to tackle in her book. How can she write about Black people without each Black character being in danger of representing all Black people?

The author chooses characters that feel very much like themselves and in which Blackness, while important, isn't their entire identity. In a darkly amusing piece, a young woman considers different ways of suicide in order to enhance her social media presence. "Cats do better than babies, which do far better than almost any other post". She's not sure whether her auburn weave is the way she wants to be remembered for posterity, although she likes the look right now what if it ages? Cutting hurts more than she thought it would, and she only has enough pills to give herself a stomach ache. She posts depressing songs to give her followers a hint of what's coming, but they just think she's posting a great playlist and only her mother picks up on the hint.

Social media presence factors into several stories. In one of my favorites, a young woman posts ASMR videos (soothing videos with soft repetitive sounds) and uses a whispery voice as her trademark. She is getting lots of hits and making some money, but she doesn't feel seen, just feels like she's being used as a tool. While adept at social media, she can't show her true self there.

Then there's the woman who visits the DMV who's trying to remember her therapy coping skills even though she knows going in that she's going to hate every minute of this. It's funny, but also kind of dark because this woman has some deep seated issues that she's chosen not to share with her therapist.

We're none of us that far from snapping, because we all have our individual private burdens, and that's a major theme of this collection. It sounds pretty dark, and it can be, but it can also be funny, beautiful, and let you see yourself in another person, because that's what life is too. ...more

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