Neighbors and Other Stories
Tayari Jones
(Introduction by)
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Description
A bold and haunting debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism from Diane Oliver, a missing figure in the canon of twentieth-century African American literature, with an introduction by Tayari Jones
A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver's insightful stories reverberate into the present day.
There's the nightmarish "The Closet on the Top Floor" in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; "Mint Juleps not Served Here" where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; "Spiders Cry without Tears," in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school.
These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.
Product Details
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Publish Date | February 13, 2024 |
| Pages | 320 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780802161314 |
| Dimensions | 8.3 X 5.5 X 1.4 inches | 0.8 pounds |
About the Author
Diane Oliver was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and after graduating from high school, she attended Women's College (which later became the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and was the Managing Editor of The Carolinian, the student newspaper. She published four short stories in her lifetime and three more posthumously: 'Key to the City' and 'Neighbors' published in The Sewanee Review in 1966; 'Health Service', 'Traffic Jam' and 'Mint Juleps Not Served Here' published in Negro Digest in 1965, 1966 and 1967 respectively; 'The Closet on the Top Floor' published in Southern Writing in the Sixties in 1966; and '"No Brown Sugar in Anybody's Milk"' published in The Paris Review in 2023. 'Neighbors' was a recipient of an O. Henry Award in 1967. Diane began graduate work at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and was awarded the MFA degree posthumously days after her death, at the age of 22, in a motorcycle accident in 1966.
Reviews
Praise for Neighbors and Other Stories:
Winner of the Constellation Award from American Short Fiction
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Oprah Daily
"At a moment when short stories seem less regular launchpads for long careers than occasional meteors, reading these is like finding hunks of gold bullion buried in your backyard . . . These stories detail basic routines of getting through difficult days, but then often deliver a massive wallop."-Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
"Oliver's perceptive, insightful work reflects great talent and ambition. The ease and elegance of her prose are striking, as is her faith in her readers' intelligence--the certainty that they will see glints of subtext without the need for explication."--Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Washington Post
"These short stories confront living through racism in Jim Crow America in intimate, often chilling tales. An engrossing book by a talent lost too young."--People, "Best Books to Read in February"
"Exhibits a unique delicacy in chronicling Black life in the nineteen-fifties and sixties--especially in the South amid the civil rights movement . . . Oliver delves into subtleties of class, focussing on characters such as a doctor's second wife and a daydreaming maid. At their best, the stories let ideas take shape gradually, making close observation the cornerstone of their politics."--New Yorker
"Put this collection of short stories . . . on your shelf alongside Toni and Zora--yes, it's that good."--Marion Winik, Oprah Daily
"[Oliver's] coming of age coincided with the heyday of the civil rights era, and one of the great gifts of this collection is its textured fictionalization of the period's upheaval and uncertainty . . . Indeed, if the story of American progress or racial triumphalism is a comforting aspiration, it is not a moving or even realistic premise in fiction: Instead, Oliver's twisty narratives want to capture advancement's more ambiguous emotional terrain."--Kelton Ellis, The Nation
"Neighbors and Other Stories offers an amalgamation of tales--some harrowing--told by a writer who knew all too well what it meant to be racialized. Oliver's insights give the powerful storytelling that much more punch."--Christian Science Monitor
"Though I mourn the counterfactual of what Oliver might have become if longer lived, we are fortunate to know of her work now, in the perpetuity of fiction."--Lauren Michelle Jackson, BOMB, "Editor's Choice"
"Remarkable . . . Oliver was certainly serious and politically aware, but these qualities are subsumed in her tender, humanist vision . . . In almost every case in Neighbors, despair is quite literally only half the story. A great deal of resilience is on show too . . . Oliver has a strong sense of character and a fine ear for dialogue, along with an innate sense of how to structure a story . . . Just as the vexed subject of race remains central to the American story, even today Diane Oliver's precocious and brilliant talent hasn't aged at all."--Damon Galgut, Times Literary Supplement
"Oliver's subject is the black female experience in 1960s America, in the period when racial segregation was illegal but prejudices remained ingrained--but the tales succeed for their li
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