Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans

Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes. And in 'Snakes', the mixed-race daughter of intellectuals recounts the disastrous summer she spent with her White grandmother and cousin, a summer that has unforeseen repercussions in the present.

In 'Jellyfish', a father's misguided attempt to rescue a gift for his grown daughter from an apartment collapse magnifies all he doesn't know about her. Evans follows girls and young women who are intelligent, gutsy and black. In 'Harvest', a college student's unplanned pregnancy forces her to confront her own feelings of inadequacy in comparison to her White classmates. They evoke the thrill of an all-night conversation with your hip, frank, funny college roommate. Now this debut short story collection delivers on the promise of that early story. Ididn’ttellherhowIhadlearneditwasn’tjust snakesthatcouldeatyoualive. Written when she was only 23, Evans' story of two Black, blue-collar 15-year-old girls' flirtation with adulthood for one night was startling in its pitch-perfect examination of race, class, and the shifting terrain of adolescence. wayoutofhermother’shousethatshe’dneverfoundforherself, momatter howmanytimessheranaway. When Danielle Evans' short story 'Virgins' was published in The Paris Review in late 2007, it announced the arrival of a major new American short story writer. Introducing a new star of her generation, an electric debut story collection about mixed-race and African American teenagers, women, and men struggling to find a place in their families and communities.

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans