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A review by gabsalott13
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
5.0
As my meme indicates, I want to spend this review talking about craft, riffing, and why I had the same experience with this book as I did with my favorite album of 2020, DUR& by Durand Bernarr.
For an eight-year member of the Danielle Evans Hive, I was mad late with finishing this book, even though I got it the day it came out. I wanted to wait until I ended my reading slump first, because sometimes I don’t appreciate books as much as I should when I read them after books I hated (the bad energy carries over, or something.) When I found out that Danielle Evans was going to be on my favorite book podcast, The Stacks, I knew I had to go ahead and dig in.
In her episode, Evans talks about how the best Black short story collections resist reductionism, which is also true of my favorite albums. The genre’s expansiveness allows it to wade in several different waters, to Evans’ point. This, amongst other merits, means that the best collections counter the lazy synthesis that occurs when (White) readers get ahold of “the Black book of the year” (think about what happened with An American Marriage or Between The World and Me.) In Evans’ case, each story is a world of its own. In the case of “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want”, there are even stories within stories! In addition to challenging the audience’s reductions, she also challenges her own through revision: I enjoyed reading the “remastered”, slightly different versions of pre-published stories in this collection. I was able to appreciate “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain” so much more in the context of this collection (though I still believe it stole the show in Best American Short Stories 2017.)
Because I’m apparently running this album metaphor into the ground, we need to talk about how this story *builds* on itself! Like, I’ve never in my life read a short story collection that is so masterfully sequenced that it flows like a tracklist. I think this is an important point because it helps explain why in my experience, I didn’t fall in love with the first two stories off-bat. After getting all the way through, “Happily Ever After” and “ROYGBIV” now read to me like an intro track, where the musician is clueing you into the world they’re building. This is *precisely* how I felt with DUR&, since I was primarily used to hearing Durand Bernarr’s covers of individual songs and background performances with Erykah Badu. Once I settled into his album’s new songs, I could appreciate the vocal brilliance I was used to immediately registering in his renditions of other people’s songs. In the same way, Danielle Evans stans have been drooling over strikingly brilliant, individually published stories of hers for the past ten years. I think we had to be reintroduced to how it feels to be in a controlled environment with her, which requires a sustained brilliance in her stories.
Once you get adjusted to this “sustained brilliance”, it is so worth it. Evans is the GOAT when it comes to pacing--she settles and unsettles readers right on time. In “Boys Go to Jupiter” and “Alcatraz”, she’s laying out two stories at once--one through the narrative of her White characters, and another through the lived experiences of her Black readers, who sense the impending doom on the pages ahead. “Anything Could Disappear” is a testament to process, and how an author can unfold a set of events that wrecks you a bit more on every page.
Like everybody else, I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THE NOVELLA. If we’re talking seminal tracks, this is Danielle Evans’ equivalent of “Gemini” on Sound & Color, “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” or “Liberation” on Aquemini, “Cherry Coffee” on CUT 4 ME, “Green Eyes” on Mama’s Gun. Genevieve is one of the most enthralling characters I’ve ever read about, and I loved the way we learned about this character through the eyes of her longtime frenemy, Cassandra. This is such an astute depiction of the quasi-sisterly competition that happens between “the only” Black women in elite spaces, with particular care for the two geographies of the story (the DMV and Wisconsin.) Evans is resonant without being preachy, and has so much to say about class divisions, black misleadership/tokenism, and how desirability scams us all. This novella also contains the ONLY interracial relationship in 21st-century fiction worth its weight in gold. Evans’ ruminations on how romantic relationships with White men bring a certain level of “comfort” to cishet Black women are so beyond the typical hand-wringing that accompanies the plethora of novels that touch on this topic. In ruder terms, THIS is the power analysis that Kiley Reid n’em are missing. Y’all already know I was in love with the genealogical mysteries that unfolded in the latter half, and the way Evans layers the different arcs of time. I want to land on Deesha Philyaw’s genius comparison of this novella to Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ “Belles Lettres”, which to me ties back to Danielle Evans’ musicality--who else is sampling another short story this flawlessly?!? I’ll wait.
After y’all have finished reading it, I highly recommend checking out the impeccable Stacks episode where host Traci Thomas and guest Deesha Philyaw discuss this collection. Deesha Philyaw is the author of my favorite short story collection of 2020, so I literally died at the fact that she reviewed my favorite short story collection of 2021. In the podcast, she and Traci have this perfect conversation on the seamless craft in Danielle Evans’ stories: Traci notes that “[Evans] doesn’t need you to see her work” in the masturbatory fashion of many MFA-trained writers, and Deesha explains this is because "she trusts us as readers." THAT is the true beauty here; that is her riff. Danielle Evans is so efficient in her craft, characterization, and pace that she is running circles around your faves and making it seem like a walk on the beach. Months later, I am still fangirling over my favorite moments on DUR&, and still in awe of each song. In the same way, I know I will be stuck on these stories for years to come.
TLDR/Meme Corner: If Danielle Evans doesn’t do another thing for me, she’s already done enough!!!! *cues an Ebony Jenkins praise.*
For an eight-year member of the Danielle Evans Hive, I was mad late with finishing this book, even though I got it the day it came out. I wanted to wait until I ended my reading slump first, because sometimes I don’t appreciate books as much as I should when I read them after books I hated (the bad energy carries over, or something.) When I found out that Danielle Evans was going to be on my favorite book podcast, The Stacks, I knew I had to go ahead and dig in.
In her episode, Evans talks about how the best Black short story collections resist reductionism, which is also true of my favorite albums. The genre’s expansiveness allows it to wade in several different waters, to Evans’ point. This, amongst other merits, means that the best collections counter the lazy synthesis that occurs when (White) readers get ahold of “the Black book of the year” (think about what happened with An American Marriage or Between The World and Me.) In Evans’ case, each story is a world of its own. In the case of “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want”, there are even stories within stories! In addition to challenging the audience’s reductions, she also challenges her own through revision: I enjoyed reading the “remastered”, slightly different versions of pre-published stories in this collection. I was able to appreciate “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain” so much more in the context of this collection (though I still believe it stole the show in Best American Short Stories 2017.)
Because I’m apparently running this album metaphor into the ground, we need to talk about how this story *builds* on itself! Like, I’ve never in my life read a short story collection that is so masterfully sequenced that it flows like a tracklist. I think this is an important point because it helps explain why in my experience, I didn’t fall in love with the first two stories off-bat. After getting all the way through, “Happily Ever After” and “ROYGBIV” now read to me like an intro track, where the musician is clueing you into the world they’re building. This is *precisely* how I felt with DUR&, since I was primarily used to hearing Durand Bernarr’s covers of individual songs and background performances with Erykah Badu. Once I settled into his album’s new songs, I could appreciate the vocal brilliance I was used to immediately registering in his renditions of other people’s songs. In the same way, Danielle Evans stans have been drooling over strikingly brilliant, individually published stories of hers for the past ten years. I think we had to be reintroduced to how it feels to be in a controlled environment with her, which requires a sustained brilliance in her stories.
Once you get adjusted to this “sustained brilliance”, it is so worth it. Evans is the GOAT when it comes to pacing--she settles and unsettles readers right on time. In “Boys Go to Jupiter” and “Alcatraz”, she’s laying out two stories at once--one through the narrative of her White characters, and another through the lived experiences of her Black readers, who sense the impending doom on the pages ahead. “Anything Could Disappear” is a testament to process, and how an author can unfold a set of events that wrecks you a bit more on every page.
Like everybody else, I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THE NOVELLA. If we’re talking seminal tracks, this is Danielle Evans’ equivalent of “Gemini” on Sound & Color, “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” or “Liberation” on Aquemini, “Cherry Coffee” on CUT 4 ME, “Green Eyes” on Mama’s Gun. Genevieve is one of the most enthralling characters I’ve ever read about, and I loved the way we learned about this character through the eyes of her longtime frenemy, Cassandra. This is such an astute depiction of the quasi-sisterly competition that happens between “the only” Black women in elite spaces, with particular care for the two geographies of the story (the DMV and Wisconsin.) Evans is resonant without being preachy, and has so much to say about class divisions, black misleadership/tokenism, and how desirability scams us all. This novella also contains the ONLY interracial relationship in 21st-century fiction worth its weight in gold. Evans’ ruminations on how romantic relationships with White men bring a certain level of “comfort” to cishet Black women are so beyond the typical hand-wringing that accompanies the plethora of novels that touch on this topic. In ruder terms, THIS is the power analysis that Kiley Reid n’em are missing. Y’all already know I was in love with the genealogical mysteries that unfolded in the latter half, and the way Evans layers the different arcs of time. I want to land on Deesha Philyaw’s genius comparison of this novella to Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ “Belles Lettres”, which to me ties back to Danielle Evans’ musicality--who else is sampling another short story this flawlessly?!? I’ll wait.
After y’all have finished reading it, I highly recommend checking out the impeccable Stacks episode where host Traci Thomas and guest Deesha Philyaw discuss this collection. Deesha Philyaw is the author of my favorite short story collection of 2020, so I literally died at the fact that she reviewed my favorite short story collection of 2021. In the podcast, she and Traci have this perfect conversation on the seamless craft in Danielle Evans’ stories: Traci notes that “[Evans] doesn’t need you to see her work” in the masturbatory fashion of many MFA-trained writers, and Deesha explains this is because "she trusts us as readers." THAT is the true beauty here; that is her riff. Danielle Evans is so efficient in her craft, characterization, and pace that she is running circles around your faves and making it seem like a walk on the beach. Months later, I am still fangirling over my favorite moments on DUR&, and still in awe of each song. In the same way, I know I will be stuck on these stories for years to come.
TLDR/Meme Corner: If Danielle Evans doesn’t do another thing for me, she’s already done enough!!!! *cues an Ebony Jenkins praise.*