In her debut, short-fiction collection "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," Danielle Evans gives voice to black, middle-class, young adults in stories of identity, sex, parent-child relationships and love. She covers a lot of material in these eight stories relating to the formation of racial identity, yet slides the effects of racial identity in so smoothly that they are relatable across color lines.
Sex and its complications are themes in almost all of the stories, especially in “Virgins,” which was previously published in Paris Monthly and "Best American Short Stories 2008." This story is about teenage girls experimenting with sex without the maturity to handle its consequences. Evans addresses these issues again in “Harvest,” this time using white, college girls selling their eggs to pay for tuition or buy designer clothing as its context.
Evans poignantly writes how the build of this resentment starts for “barely middle-class black families where the girls were always called Courtney or Kelli or Lindsay or Brooke, and the family forgoes vacation and savings and stock for a nice house in a nice neighborhood in the hopes that the neighbors will forget they are black.” In both stories sex, and the desire for it, is a dividing point between friends, and men are seen as predators to be loved and feared for their ability to take and protect.
Biracial identity, family and mental health are all subjects explored in perhaps the best story in the collection — “Snakes.”
This story is about a biracial girl named Tara reflecting on the summer she spent with her white cousin Allison and grandmother Lydia in their Florida country club neighborhood. The girls busy themselves by playing in the lake behind their grandmother’s home, until, in a moment of frustration, Grandma Lydia tells Tara that there are snakes in the lake. This seemingly small lie engulfs the entire family, changing their relationships and shaping their futures in unforeseen, pitiful ways. This is also the only story in the collection that does not use college as a pivotal point that characters are striving to, or from which they are recovering.
Evans even infuses the male perspective into these stories in “Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go,” about a soldier trying to re-integrate into civilian life after serving in Iraq, and in “The King of a Vast Empire,” about the damage divorce and trauma have caused a dysfunctional brother and sister. These are both good stories, but Evans’ female voice infiltrates the narration of “The King of a Vast Empire” in a way that makes one question the narrator’s sex until it is revealed in the story, and not in a good way.
“Robert E. Lee Is Dead” is a wonderful ending to an overall well-crafted collection of short stories. It is a new take on a classic tale of being from the “wrong side of the tracks,” with its narrator Crystal like a black, more educated Maniac Magee. In this story, white flight and the need to be accepted are set against the football game between Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee high schools. In this environment, black students are trying to thrive in a glorified old South legacy that reaches its pinnacle at the height of black oppression.
This story is especially well-written, because the narrator’s language changes as her identity changes “…I’d slipped through our school’s de facto segregation...” she says about being criticized for being smart and as a result losing social acceptance.
And as screwed up as some of these characters are, it is refreshing to read literature about black people that are educated, middle-class and passionate in spite of themselves. Evans has mastered the art of a good build while also examining the psychology of middle-class, black youth. "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self" is a book of untold stories, crafted in a way that makes them each worth reading a few times.
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
By Danielle Evans.
Riverhead Books. 232 pages. $25.95
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