Some are darkly humorous-from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide, while others are devastatingly poignant-from a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, to the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture. In Heads of the Colored People Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in the compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes.Įach captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. This reading group guide for Heads of the Colored People includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires “has taken the best of what Toni Cade Bambara, Morgan Parker, and Junot Díaz do plus a whole lot of something we’ve never seen in American literature, blended it all together.giving us one of the finest short-story collections” (Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division). Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship.
In the title story, when a cosplayer, dressed as his favorite anime character, is mistaken for a violent threat the consequences are dire in another story, a teen struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with so-called black culture. Some are darkly humorous-two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks-while others are devastatingly poignant. Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with race, identity politics, and the contemporary middle class in this “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo) collection.Įach captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of utterly original characters. In one of the season’s most acclaimed works of fiction-longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the PEN Open Book Award-Nafissa Thompson-Spires offers “a firecracker of a book.a triumph of storytelling: intelligent, acerbic, and ingenious” ( Financial Times). Included in Best Books of 2018 Lists from Refinery29, NPR, The Root, HuffPost, Vanity Fair, Bustle, Chicago Tribune, PopSugar, and The Undefeated. * Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize* *Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award and Aspen Words Literary Prize*
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