Overview

"A bold and haunting debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism, from Diane Oliver, a missing figure in the canon of twentieth-century African American literature A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver's insightful stories reverberate into the present day. There's the nightmarish ""The Closet on the Top Floor"" in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear. In ""Mint Juleps Not Served Here,"" a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him. ""Spiders Cry without Tears,"" tells of a couple, Meg and Walt, who are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love. The high-tension titular story follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school. These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, this is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters."

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Reviews

"""Her stories deal with the everyday lives of Black families of all classes as they contend with issues such as segregation, poverty, and prejudice and their own hopes for the future."" -- ""Kirkus Review (starred review)"" ""Offers an amalgamation of tales--some harrowing--told by a writer who knew all too well what it meant to be racialized."" -- ""Christian Science Monitor"" ""Oliver's subject is the Black female experience in 1960s America, in the period when racial segregation was illegal but prejudices remained ingrained--but the tales succeed for their literary qualities, not their subject matter."" -- ""The Guardian (London)"" ""These short stories confront living through racism in Jim Crow America in intimate, often chilling tales."" -- ""People magazine"" ""These stories detail basic routines of getting through difficult days but then often deliver a massive wallop."" -- ""New York Times"""

Author Information

"Diane Oliver (1943-1966) published four short stories in her lifetime and two more posthumously in The Sewanee Review, Negro Digest, and Southern Writing. Her short story ""Neighbors"" was a recipient of an O. Henry Award in 1967. She began graduate work at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and was awarded the MFA degree posthumously days after her death, at the age of 22, in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Tayari Jones is the author of Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. She holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa, and she serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers. Emana Rachelle is a New York City-based stage, screen, and voice-over actress with more than ten years of experience as a standup comedian. A proud member of both SAG-AFTRA and AEA, she has an MFA from West Virginia University, where she served as a W. E. B. DuBois Graduate Fellow, and a BFA from NYU Tisch. She also trained at The British American Dramatic Academy. She has narrated audiobooks in a wide variety of genres, including YA, fantasy, science fiction, MOCAP, and romance."

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