A profound, prismatic collection.
Fifteen stories, originally published between 1953 and 2018, that center around young Black women.
A trip to FAO Schwarz turns into an uncomfortable encounter with economic inequality for Sylvia and her friends in Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson,” while Princesse in Edwidge Danticat’s “Seeing Things Simply” learns a gentler lesson about her own artistic potential from a glamorous French-speaking painter. In Alexia Arthurs’ “Bad Behavior,” Stacy is left unceremoniously with her grandmother in Jamaica by parents who are “afraid of their fourteen-year-old daughter.” Valerie, in Rita Dove’s “Fifth Sunday,” is determined to win the affections of the minister’s “very ugly” son, while Avery, in Dana Johnson’s “Melvin in the Sixth Grade,” is besotted with the story’s titular character, a gangly White kid she calls “My beautiful alien from Planet Cowboy.” Collecting the stories of literary giants—Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston—and contemporary authors including Camille Acker and Amina Gautier, the book presents an expansive, decades-spanning view of Black girlhood. “I want to attest to the worthiness of Black girls as they come of age—their need for protection, love, and freedom,” Edim writes in the introduction. Organized around the themes of innocence, belonging, love, and self-discovery, the collection is genuinely riveting; the stories narrate the lives of indelible characters with humor, irony, and immense skill. And while each story differs greatly in setting and tone, throughlines arise. Grandmothers, mothers, and sisters loom large in these stories; two of them—“The Richer, The Poorer” by Dorothy West and Alice Walker's “Everyday Use”—center on the dramatic differences in sisters’ lives. And throughout, the stories’ protagonists often struggle with the projections of the people around them, colored by their Blackness: what the narrator of Paule Marshall’s “Reena” calls “that definition of me, of her and millions like us, formulated by others to serve out their fantasies, a definition we have to combat at an unconscionable cost to the self and even use, at times, in order to survive; the cause of so much shame and rage as well as, oddly enough, a source of pride: simply what it has meant, what it means, to be a black woman in America.”
A profound, prismatic collection.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-769-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PROFILES
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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