“When I sat down to write this list, I realized that I would need to define what ‘outsider fiction’ was in the first place, a daunting prospect. I came up with (and then discarded) several definitions that seemed to me problematic because they posited the ‘inside’ as fixed and unchanging, or insider status as only an accident of birth or demographics.”
—Danielle Evans on compiling “The Year’s Best Outsider Fiction” for NPR.
Evans’ list is a perfect follow-up to last week’s post on the absence of diversity on best-of lists. And it’s nice that this list comes from an author mentioned by Roxane Gay of HTMLGiant in her original post that launched this discussion. (She has a follow-up post here.) Like Gay, I first heard about Evans and her new book of short stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, via writer Tayari Jones’ blog. But I didn’t pick up the book until after I read Gay’s post.
The stories in this book are beautiful and surprising. I couldn’t put the book down. I think Gay said it best when she wrote, “These were stories about black people where the characters were simply allowed to be people.”
Check out Evans’ list; the only addition I’d make is to add her book to it.