Review: "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self" by Danielle Evans

Finally, after a couple months into the New Year, I have read a short story collection I can laud all sorts of praise on and not feel bad about doing so, and it is from someone who is barely older than I am, in Danielle Evans’ Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Again, new writers equal potential and growth for more and better works to come. You cannot eagerly await the next book by one of the authors you like that is dead (unless that writer is Bukowski or Kerouac, but why would you be doing that?) and no matter how many times you reread a classic work, you cannot recapture that sense of discovery. But now onto to someone who can benefit from praise (being alive and all), the great new writer Danielle Evans, and he stunning debut collection of stories, which, in my opinion, launches her into the high ranks of new black fiction. I might have mentioned this in a review or two before, but over the past couple years, we have seen the emergence of fiction that describes a new kind of black experience, one where the people telling the stories were born after the civil rights movement, and how that affects there view on their history and ways of experiencing America. Writers like Colson Whitehead and ZZ Packer, whose books not only raises questions about race and race relations, but also does so in a continuously interesting way. It is not as simple as the bad and good people who in habit their world are as clean cut to be separated by white and black. Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is right up there with Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, and doesn’t pull punches in its honest depictions of life in general. These stories range from being heartbreaking and funny, to suspenseful and sad, and none that I can think of are bad or lackluster. The first story here, “Virgins”, written when Evans was only 23, tells the story of two high school girls, and their devastating first experience with sex. It remains both intriguing, as each of them takes a different path in their search, one seemingly a good choice, while one is filled with menace, and how unexpected the outcome for both was shows true potential, especially for a writer that is so young. Finally, the last story, “Robert E Lee is Dead” is probably the other standout piece in this collection. I see why these two bookended this collection, they are very similar and deal with the same issues in different way. We meet two girls, one is a bookworm, and the other is popular, as they forge a bond that lasts all four years of high school. It leaves you with a nostalgic feeling, even if, in the end, lives are ruined by these two peoples actions as they go along life in two different paths. A solid collection without any weak spots, Danielle Evans is now someone I am eagerly awaiting a novel from.

Rating: 5/5