Everyday people The color of life--a short story anthology

Review by Booklist Review

An African American minister, trapped in his flipped car, reminisces about his estranged son. A ghost talker who collects unhappy spirits yearns for the ghost of the person she loves most. These are a few of the unforgettable characters peopling this rich banquet of tales by African American, Latinix, Indigenous, and Asian storytellers. Diverse in styles and settings as well as author ethnicity, Baker's selections include love stories, ghost stories, crime fiction, fantasy, and horror. There are immigrants trying to reconnect to their culture of origin and others in flight from it. There are tales set in big cities and bayous, Nigeria and New York, New Orleans and Nebraska. While the collection includes familiar names like Alexander Chee and Jason Reynolds, Baker also gives space to the fresh voices of Allison Mills, Carleigh Baker, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, and Hasnathika Sirisena. Baker's anthology is a delight and highly recommended for cross-cultural collections.--Williams, Lesley Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The mission statement of this anthology composed of works by writers of color is that their stories "speak to experience, loss, fulfillment, and also being at that fork in the road where decisions must be made yet are not always pursued due to moral fortitude." The collection contains offerings from both established authors like Yiyun Li and Mitchell S. Jackson, and emerging talents such as Dennis Norris II and Brandon Taylor. Standouts include Allison Mills's "If a Bird Can Be a Ghost," about a young girl who learns more from her grandmother than just her ghost-busting abilities, and Carleigh Baker's "Chins & Elbows," a story that puts a recovering addict, her well-meaning friend, and an inmate doing time for a violent crime together on a trip to protect the local salmon population. Though some may wish for some greater variation in form and genre in the stories, this is an excellent sampling of some of the most exciting voices in literature from the past two decades and beyond that will leave readers with plenty of authors to revisit or discover. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Short fiction from a diverse array of writers of color.Gathering both emerging and established voices, editor Baker has produced a vital anthology whose strength lies in its unwillingness to commit to a single genre or style. Some of the stories, like Courttia Newland's creepy science-fiction adventure "Link," are explicitly political. Newland tells the story of Aaron, a black British college student who possesses mysterious psychic abilities. On the eve of the 2016 Brexit referendum, he encounters other young people of color with similar abilities; soon, they face the temptation of using their powers to punish those who would exclude them. Other stories, like Glendaliz Camacho's haunting "Long Enough to Drown," are less explicitly political. Camacho concerns herself with the particular textures of an Afro-Latinx woman's romantic longing for her dead boyfriend's brother. Brandon's racehe is a white Irish man, "quite the trophy to bring home," as the narrator saysraises important questions about what drives desire. Alexander Chee's "Mine" follows a young gay son of Korean immigrants. Perhaps the most surprising entry comes from Brandon Taylor: His lyrical "Boy/Gamin" follows a young white boy from childhood to adolescence. Written in the urgency of the present tense, the story tracks Jackson's struggle to accommodate his budding desire for other boys. One of those love interests is a young black boy named Eric, about whom Jackson has vivid fantasies. While floating off the Montgomery, Alabama, shore, "he imagines he can feel Eric's fingers on his stomach...he sees Eric's face, long and angular like a dog's, black skin everywhere, green eyes staring over thick lashes. He's beautiful and skinny and Jackson wants to punch him in the nose to make him ugly." This sentence displays the audacious complexity of Taylor's prose as he straddles the confusion of adolescent desire, emerging queerness, and racial difference. Not every story works: Jason Reynolds' "African-American Special" relies too heavily on voice, while Yiyun Li's "A Sheltered Woman" suffers for not having enough space to unfold the mysteries that accumulate around Chinese immigrant Auntie Mei.This is a vital, riveting anthology that emphasizes the complexity and diversity of minority experience. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Everyday People INTRODUCTION For a while I had this long-standing joke that when Black babies are born they are smacked to encourage their first cry of life, swathed, and placed on the bosom of the person who brought them into this world, and then they're handed a copy of The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall. The Black Poets was the quintessential book I'd see on the shelves of my fellow Black writer friends. If you were into literature, especially poetry, as an African American, then you had to have this book. It verified your commitment to the cause and for the culture. If you don't have it, why not? How will you learn about those who came before us? Where we're going and where we've been? No shade, but I have my copy. Whether I got the book soon after coming into the world or not, I cannot say. There are other seminal anthologies used for study and inspiration, such as The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction or E. Lynn Harris and Marita Golden's Gumbo, a celebration of African American voices. I'd like to think that Everyday People: The Color of Life--A Short Story Anthology will be that type of book over time. On shelves not only for reference but for pleasure, a book housing short fiction from an array of wonderful contemporary writers both established and emerging that speaks to experience, loss, fulfillment, and also being at that fork in the road where decisions must be made yet are not always pursued due to failings of moral fortitude. Each story will always speak to our humanity and the universality of who we are as People of Color/Indigenous People. As I told the contributors when I approached them, Everyday People isn't "my baby" in terms of inception. This book was birthed through the ingenuity and enthusiasm of the late Brook Stephenson, a wonderful person and literary citizen who loved books as much if not even more than I do. He wanted to see a new collection celebrate PoC voices. The aim here is to continue what other writers have cobbled together of not only Black voices but Asian/Pacific Islander, Indigenous, and Latinx ones as well. At a time when "diversity" is used as a buzzword, Brook sought to invest in the stories that people may not be seeing. The name of this anthology is not meant to solely focus on the racial composition of the writers or characters but to showcase the larger story and relationships depicted as well as the landscape--be it in New York City, Maine, Alabama, Great Britain, South Korea, Ghana, or Sri Lanka. As the Sly & the Family Stone song of the same name goes "I am no better and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do . . ." I inherited this anthology after Brook passed away suddenly and Atria was gung ho about seeing it come to fruition. From there I solicited and corresponded with contributors during a very tense time (the 2016 US presidential election). I was heartened by how eagerly those I reached out to wanted to add their names and fiction in any way they could, or even offer a hand after the fact. In 2017, I found that reading their submissions reinvigorated me with the power of the written word when things seemed bleak. In addition, the versatility of our experiences as expressed in each story fortified me in new ways. These stories, mostly new and some republished, pack a punch in all their iterations, leaving me sated knowing that the world will have a chance to also engage with these characters and writers. From the political to the personal, from familial strife to geographical displacement, from heartbreak to ego checking, stories that gain inspiration from Langston Hughes's Simple series (Jason Reynolds) to expounding on the depths of grief (Glendaliz Camacho), each contributor draws from a well of work that can be studied and should be savored. I hope that in this time when people seek to be more inclusive and representative in their writing and reading that Everyday People will be that compilation reached for and sought after for the bevy of short fiction that doesn't relegate the authors or characters to their "status" as much as recognizes their skill. I want to extend a tremendous amount of thanks to every contributor (Courttia, Brandon, Alex, Nana, Allison, Mitch, Carleigh, Dennis, Yiyun, Mia, Nelly, Hasanthika, Jason, and Glendaliz) for sharing not only these stories with me but for the continuous work you do in your craft and your unyielding support of other writers in this industry so that we may see more PoC/Indigenous voices rise up. And thanks/blessings to Brook Stephenson, who is greatly missed. I'm confident we did you and your vision for Everyday People proud. --JENNIFER BAKER November 2017 Excerpted from Everyday People: The Color of Life--A Short Story Anthology All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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