A collection of short stories that aren't afraid to look at uncomfortable and sometimes painful experiences. I particularly found the stories on women's experience of mental health and illness really strong, from the woman trying to recover from childhood abuse to a desperately ill single mum trying to work out what will happen to her baby. African American experiences of racism in school, of aspirational middle class parents. In some of the stories characters reappear, and perspectives on earlier stories change. Read in June 2020, the first story packs a particular punch.

"Hum a few bars of "Say My Name," but in third person plural if that does something for you".

Wow. This book is simply exceptional. I received an ARC for this almost 2 years ago, but for some reason (ahem, college) I never picked it up until now. And I really regret it.

Thompson-Spires has managed to write a collection of short stories that are not only individually brilliant, but collectively form a very cohesive, clear narrative, that beautifully illustrates and encapsulate her point. As she admits in the author's note, her book plays with the concept of 'Heads' (literal heads, leaders, and human psychology); it is a very interesting concept in and of itself, but her preoccupation with blackness made it all the more interesting. It is a very powerful, very authentic, and very original work, exploring what it means to be black in America in the 21st century.

While the overall collection is really, really good, there are certain stories that stood out to me. The very first story, Heads of the colored people: Four fancy sketches, two chalk outlines, and no apology beautifully sets the tone for the rest of book, and has you hooked from the very beginning. For me, that story, alongside Wash Clean the Bones , was also the book's most heart-breaking point. I also really enjoyed the stories titled This Todd and A conversation about bread , and I thought Belles Lettres was probably one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life.

Overall, an incredible, well-crafted collection of short stories, that ultimately encourages me to read more of the genre - a genre I have avoided for most of my life.

I both loved this and felt passive towards it in equal measures, if that makes sense? Some stories I loved, and I adore her sharp criticisms of race in the "post" racial, but some I could have skimmed through. The stories didn't flow with ease - some featured the same characters, some were completely disparate, some were about the same direct characters.

As a white, middle class English woman, I didn't notice all of the racial undertones in all the stories. That is not a criticism and is to be expected. If you're reading this as a white person, especially a middle class one, even if you consider yourself woke, expect this. Know it isn't your space.

My favourite two stories were the mothers bouncing through letters (although that was a story that had racial undertones lost on me) and the first story, which for me centred on black male identity and how to reconcile it's breadth with its narrowness.

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I went into this book not knowing it was a short story collection for some reason, though I'm glad I did because I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise having just finished Cecelia Ahern's Roar.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires has created a collection that examines what it means to be black in America, whilst maintaining a link throughout the stories by using a minor character from one story as the main focus of the next. I loved how this was done and how some of my favourite characters continued to be mentioned in the stories that followed.

I was thoroughly enjoying this book for the first half but I feel that it lost momentum in the second half and some of my least favourite stories were towards the end. The topics discussed were the most uncomfortable but also I don't think they were always handled well in the last few stories. 

Overall I enjoyed this collection but I was disappointed by the second half of the book. I would recommend it but unfortunately it's not one of my favourites.

Heads of the Colored People is a witty and - at times - savage portrayal of middle class African Americans. Through many of the stories there is a thread of expectations - the expectations of the black community of their own; the expectations of the white folk; and the expectations of the individuals themselves. There is a sense that it is very hard, if not impossible, to be an individual who just happens to be black. There are roles to be played and if you don't conform to the expectations, someone is going to get hurt.

The stories themselves are very varied. We have a crotchety university professor who hoped for a quieter life by working at the black university; warring mothers waving qualifications at one another when botching about one another's daughter; a social media whore; a disabled guy and his stalker. None of the stories is boring, and for the most part they work well. Some of the stories interlink or have common characters - and I might spot more links if I went back to the beginning. This builds a sense of community and shows how some of the characters resent having expectations forced upon them while they force their own expectations on others.

Despite the darkness, there's a healthy dose of positivity. Many of the characters are upwardly mobile - even the victims don't have a sense of victimhood. Poverty is something that happens to other people, although the legacy if poverty is hinted at occasionally - for example, one story centres around the first time a black person tasted potato bread.

The writing is clear and the narrative direction is clear. None of those opaque short stories with ambiguous endings here. It's not pretending to be arty, but is quietly effective in giving the reader both entertainment and an insight into a community that may not be well known or well represented in literature.

The collection is short - always a relief with short stories as collections can feel quite choppy quite quickly - and the individual stories feel just the right length, long enough to make their point but short enough not to go stale.

Really, a very good collection.

A very original and darkly funny collection of short stories about black identity and living in a "post-racial" society. The title 'Heads of the Colored People' is a reference to sketches done by James McCune Smith in Frederick Douglass's Paper in the 19th century. In the author's note Thompson-Spires describes these sketches as narrating "black life from the mundane to the obscure and span the didactic to the macabre", and I think she's definitely succeeded in creating a modern-day equivalent. This collection made me laugh one minute and then take my breath away in the space of one story, a very impressive debut.

A thought-provoking and original collection of short stories that offer a commentary on the times we live in.

I'm a big fan of short story collections, so I knew I wanted to read this ever since I first heard about it. And I was not disappointed! The stories in this collection all deal with race - and especially with what it means to have a black body in a racist society - in one way or another, and most of them are interconnected to some degree (quite a few characters appear in more than one story). They pretty much all made me feel slightly or even very uncomfortable, but I think they are supposed to.
As with any short story collection, some of the stories were stronger than others, but Thompson-Spires' writing feels very polished and innovative and overall, this was a very satisfying reading experience!

This book is sharp, witty, freshly observant and a little heart breaking so in all a great collection of stories.
My particular favourite was Belles Lettres that had me laughing out loud because we’ve all met those parents who’s children’s arguments become their own.

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Nafissa Thompson-Spires's debut short story collection, Heads of the Colored People, takes its title from the nineteenth-century black American writer James McCune Smith's The Heads of the Colored People (1852-4),written under the pen name Communipaw, a series of ten biographical character sketches of black working class people living in New York. Thompson-Spires writes that 'like the original sketches, these stories maintain an interest in black US citizenship, the black middle class, and the future of black American life during pivotal sociopolitical moments.' Many of her stories fall into rough groups. The opening story, 'Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, And No Apology' totally deconstructs one of the most familiar narratives we hear about black American lives: the innocent black man shot and killed by the police.

Thompson-Spires's protagonist, Riley, is as deliberately unlike any familiar images of these victims as it's possible to be, with 'blue contact lenses', bleached hair and a love of cosplay, dressed as manga character Tamaki Such 'in a skinny periwinkle suit with a skinny black tie.' After his death, the picture released of Riley in the press shows him in 'an oversize blue shirt and a bedazzled blue bandana over cornrows. His mother, and girlfriend, Paris, explained repeatedly that he was not dressed as a thug, but as nineties Justin Timberlake.' But this title story isn't just about confounding stereotypes; the omniscient narrator's voice constantly intrudes, corrects and analyses. Thompson-Spires seems to be commenting on how difficult it is to tell a story like this without all the other versions of it getting superimposed over the top. It's in this story that her voice sounds most like Paul Beatty's brilliant, Booker-Prize winning The Sellout.

The first set of stories in this collection loosely follows Fatima, growing up in an all-white neighbourhood and at a series of virtually all-white schools. In 'Belles Lettres', Fatima's mother Monica exchanges a series of increasingly angry notes with the mother of the only other black girl at her elementary school, Christinia; in 'The Body's Defenses Against Itself', an adult Fatima can't help comparing herself to the only other black woman in her yoga class, while thinking back to her feud with Christinia; finally, in 'Fatima, the Biloquist: A Transformation Story', the teenage Fatima befriends an albino black girl, Violet, who hails from a much more diverse public school and who teaches her how to talk and behave 'like a black person'. Thompson-Spires reflects a more modern version of the experience of growing up elite and black that Margo Jefferson describes so well in Negroland; in another of the stories in this collection, her female black protagonist, contemplating suicide methods, also picks up on the idea that black women are rarely allowed to be at the tragic centre of stories about self-harm and suicide, because they aren't seen as fragile and as worthy of care in the same way as white women are.

A second set of stories brings together some of my favourite pieces in this collection, when Thompson-Spires turns her satire up to ten. In 'The Subject of Consumption', a documentary-maker seeks dysfunctional families leading alternative lifestyles. In 'Suicide, Watch', the quasi-suicidal black woman mentioned above tries desperately to get as much attention as possible on Facebook while she hints she's thinking of ending her life, only to kill herself accidentally by microwaving her phone: 'in the moment, Jilly saw only the bright crimson of the explosion. It came in four red pops, like notifications, friend requests.' In 'Whisper to a Scream', a teenage girl makes soothing ASMR YouTube videos even as she knows that men are privately getting off on them - as long as they can't see her face. I usually steer clear of any satire about 'social media' because it tends to be incredibly lazy, relying on stereotypes about how uniquely self-obsessed we are today, but Thompson-Spires bypasses all of this in the sheer horror and colour of her writing. A fourth story, 'This Todd', while not about social media as such, continues the theme of obsession with appearances, as an artist, Kim, dates a succession of disabled black men, fixating upon their injuries.

Heads of the Coloured People is a fresh, irresistible and consistently intelligent take on (mostly middle-class, mostly young) black lives in America today. Thompson-Spires is a writer to watch.

I knew I would enjoy this pretty much from the first page on. Nafissa Thompson-Spires has a wonderful tone and an even better command of her stories. I found the stories uncomfortable and biting and so very very clever. Her characters feel real if often difficult and the situations they find themselves in are frustrating and perfectly rendered.

Some stories feature the same people again, which is something I always enjoy. I do like how this gave the stories more depth without them being incomplete without the added context - this is something that I assume is difficult to achieve but oh so satisfying when it works.

My favourite story is Belle Lettres: told in a series of letters two mothers write to each other about their daughters who hate each other. I made me laugh so very hard while also making me feel sorry for their daughters. I found it clever and mean and funny and so very well-constructed: the escalation was brilliant to observe, from tiny little things such as the signatures to the change in language. Another favourite was Suicide, Watch - again beautiful but very sad. The way Thompson-Spires characterizes Julie, the focus of this story, made me impatient - and broke my heart at the same time.

An uneven collection of short stories about blackness, class and gender in contemporary America. Thompson-Spires primarily focuses on educated, middle-class, black women and their children which offers some freshness of perspective.

Overall, though, I found these were more vignettes rather than stories with a narrative arc - too many just stop without reaching any kind of 'end', even a provisional or temporary one. There are traces of humour, and some sharpness of observation but overall these are pretty samey. Despite the hype-y quotations, I didn't find anything special about the prose style and while I smirked a bit in places, this certainly didn't either make me laugh or think or make me angry... or feel much at all, to be honest.

The ongoing story of Fatima gives some shape to the book as she negotiates her identity as a black woman in an almost all white middle-class school and neighborhood. Perhaps this is a story collection which speaks more to US readers?