Heads of the Colored People: Stories
This story collection portrays Black middle-class life in schools, workplaces, families, and online spaces with satire and unease. It examines self-representation, racial stereotypes, and communal expectation through characters whose pain and humor often sit side by side.
Work Information
A sharp, funny, and unsettling collection about contemporary Black identity.
Heads of the Colored People uses linked and varied stories to ask how Blackness is seen, performed, and misread in a supposedly post-racial society. Through everyday speech, online behavior, family scenes, and school or workplace encounters, it reveals tensions of class, education, body, and belonging.
Book Information
- Publisher
- 37 Ink
- Published
- 2018-04-10
- Pages
- 224 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 2.29 x 21.27 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781501167997
- ISBN-10
- 1501167995
- Price
- 6815 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Short Stories/Single Author
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction and Kirkus Prize Finalist Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Díaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous—from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide—while others are devastatingly poignant—a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.
Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in Story Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, and The Feminist Wire , among other publications. She was a 2016 fellow of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop.
Reviews
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A literary blast of a book!
Wow! What a fabulous book. I generally don’t like short stories, but to me this read like a book with not quite stand alone chapters. The writing is sharp, clever, funny, sometimes dark and macabre, always edgy. I am thrilled to have stumbled across a ‘new’ author with so much to say and exceptional skills and intellect with which to say it. As a black American writer writing about black Americans the stories are of course about race, but never JUST about race. The characterization of even the unlikeable characters, is so thorough, so empathetically explored, that we inhabit their heads, hearts and bodies in a few pages. I can’t wait for more!
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Read, read and be surprised
Enthralling and still reading but grateful for purchase
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Mind opening and altering in the best way
A tapestry of stories that will weave together understanding, insight and humor. It's hard to pick a favor with so many stories to pull from but I would have to say my favorite so far is suicide watch. I recommend this to all my friends that love to get lost in the pages.
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so sharp and clever
Okay, wow. This is a phenomenal collection about people struggling to forge a sense of identity in a modern world. The characters are all black, and so the topic of black identity (and black bodies) is front and center. The subjects are all contemporary, a mix of cutting satire and poignant realism: the two mothers exchanging passive aggressive notes via their daughters, a family of new age fruititarians filming a reality show, a high school girl who records ASMR videos, a narcissistic woman contemplating suicide for the Facebook likes, a funeral singer struggling to cope with the number of black bodies lost to gun violence. I’m always thrilled when I pick up a book blurbed by George Saunders. These stories certainly have echoes of Saunders’ and David Foster Wallace’s post-modern fiction, but they never, ever come across as derivative. Thompson-Spires plays around with form and structure in such a sharp way while never losing site of the subjects of each story. I loved this collection to the point of giddiness.
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Excellent book
This was very well written and allowed the reader to delve in to the depths perspectives and perceptions that exist but are never mentioned. It highlighted the racial stereotypes that subtly and sometimes not so subtly exist in the undertones of society.