Emotion-wracked tales of race and love

October 12, 2010|Danielle Dreilinger, Globe Correspondent

Danielle Evans burst on the literary scene in 2007 when her short story “Virgins,’’ a gripping portrayal of black teen girls in a poor New York City suburb, appeared in the Paris Review. In “Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self,’’ her first collection, young African-American and mixed-race characters confront issues of class, race, love, and family. Whether she’s observing people who work at Ruby Tuesday or Harvard students, Evans is a startlingly good sociocultural mimic.

Each story shares a particular female voice: tough, pragmatic, knowing, snappy. Take Erica, the responsible girl in “Virgins’’: “We got dressed to go to the movies because there was nothing else to do, and even though Jasmine’s pants were a little tight on me and the shirt I’d borrowed was pushing my chest up in my face, I looked all right, just maybe like I was trying too hard.’’

That toughness may start as bravado, but the characters fake it till they make it. When a college student finds out she’s pregnant, she describes the guy with a startling coldness: “Of course I had a boyfriend. We all did, they were like accessories; we kept them stored at colleges up and down the East Coast and pulled them out on formal occasions or in the event of extreme boredom or loneliness.’’

Underneath that armor lies self-blame, the idea that if you have a problem it’s your own fault. Racial injustice is a fact to be faced with a shrug and some extra kicking. Thinks Angel, the college student, “Stupid girls got pregnant, careless girls, girls who didn’t worry about their futures.’’

The tension to keep control is especially painful in the most dramatic stories because the characters are just steps away from losing it all.

In “Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go,’’ a lonely Iraq vet starts babysitting his ex-girlfriend’s 5-year-old. Traumatized by the death of two Iraqi girls he couldn’t save, Georgie doesn’t correct his 5-year-old charge when she calls him “daddy.’’ It’s a small slip that leads to an avalanche.

At these heightened moments, Evans pulls off writing that makes your throat catch. Facing a fight he can’t accept is already lost, Georgie thinks: “It bothered him to think of Kenny putting his hand on her that way, Kenny who’d once assigned numbers to all the waitresses at Ruby Tuesday. . . . Kenny who’d probably never be gentle enough to notice what her body did while it was his.’’