Neighbors and other stories / Diane Oliver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oliver, Diane, 1943-1966, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Fiction.

African Americans.

African Americans--Social conditions--To 1964--Fiction.

Families--Fiction.

Families.

Racism against Black people--Fiction.

Racism against Black people.

Interpersonal relations--Fiction.

Interpersonal relations.

Genre:

Short stories.

short stories.

Physical Description:

xvi, 297 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, 2024.

Summary:

"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. A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of twenty-two, 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 of interracial and extramarital love; and the titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her 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 As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Neighbors

The closet on the top floor

Before twilight

Health service

Mint juleps not served here

Key to the city

The visitor

Banago kalt

When the apples are ripe

Traffic jam

"No brown sugar in anybody's milk"

Frozen voices

Our trip to the nature museum

Spiders cry without tears.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Beardwood Fund bookplate.

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Oliver, Diane, 1943-1966. Neighbors and other stories

ISBN:

9780802161314

0802161316

OCLC:

1390678410