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by Danielle Evans
The debut of a "striking" new voice in fiction (Entertainment Weekly) Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self offers a bold new perspective on the experience of being young and African-American or mixed-race in modern-day America.
In each of her stories, Danielle Evans explores the non-white American experience with honesty, wisdom, and humor. They are striking in their emotional immediacy, based in a world where inequality is a reality, but the insecurities of young adulthood and tensions within family are often the more complicating factors. One of the most lauded debuts of the year, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self announces a major new talent in Danielle Evans.
"Armed with no easy answers but plenty of bad choices, the talented, too-smart- for-their-own-good protagonists are painfully aware of the consequences of their actions, even when they think they have no better choice... . The moral ambiguity of Evans's achingly believable world finds its best expression in the devastating final story, 'Robert E. Lee is Dead,' in which the brainy black cheerleader, CeeCee, jeopardizes her own high-school graduation with a pointless act of vandalism. Although she is instigated by her closest friend Geena, whose future is less bright, CeeCee's decision is her own. She shares this characteristic with the other survivors in this arresting book, along with the regret. A welcome new talent-with a funny and dark take on being black in America." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The most vivid characters in Danielle Evans's story collection are in- betweeners: between girlhood and womanhood; between the black middle class and Ivy League privilege; between iffy boyfriends and those even less reliable; between an extended family and living on your own. To say they're caught between worlds isn't quite accurate, though; they tend to be hard-headed, sadder but wiser and, most of all, funny." —The New York Times
"This striking debut collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self offers rich slices of African-American life... [Evans's] stories are bolstered by memorable images... Evans's book, meanwhile, carries a strong scent of freshness and promise." —Entertainment Weekly
This information about Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Danielle Evans is a graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, and The Best American Short Stories 2008.
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