Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

On whether this is the book she would have wanted to read growing up Seeing another black person across the road from me makes me very happy sometimes, and I will do the nod - but that's not the way I grew up. Having grown up really isolated from other black kids, I've come to really appreciate just the visibility of other black people. You will hear about it, and you will be called uppity, bougie, all kinds of things. If you grow up in Southern California, people don't tend to do the nod, the acknowledgement of other black people - but when I moved to the South, it was very important, it seemed like, for black people to be acknowledged by me and to acknowledge me. I've experienced that, in a very negative sense. but I never saw myself reflected in any of those stories, I never saw black characters like me, dealing with being the only one. I read a lot of humor, I read a lot of great literary fiction and satire. But for Reggie, he mentions that it comes out in through nosebleeds all the time.' And for Randolph, it comes out in these passive aggressive antics with his officemate. 'So his friend Reggie talks about how his anger has to come out in some kind of way.

But he is angry, and he doesn't know how to process it.

Randolph is always policing himself - he can't get too angry, because then he'll be seen as a stereotypical angry black man. Having to be a representative in this space,' Thompson-Spires says. 'He's unsure all the time, and there's a way that his lack of assurance is very much related to his black identity and his status as a mouthpiece all the time. He's exhausted from what he calls 'performing his status as an anti-stereotype,' as he tries to negotiate terms with a new officemate. Characters like Randolph, a black professor at a small college. Thompson-Spires' debut short story collection is called Heads of the Colored People, and it's full of characters coping with those pressures. It can be a hard role to fill, says author Nafissa Thompson-Spires, 'because you are sort of a representative of what people see as black, by virtue of them not having had much exposure to it, there are all these additional pressures on top of the standard pressures of being black in a white world.'

Sometimes it's incidental - the only black woman in an hour-long yoga class. Sometimes the only-ness is existential - like the only black student in a private school. How?Īmerica has had its first black baseball player, its first black astronaut, its first black president - but after the firsts, the world is still full of onlies. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Heads of the Colored People Subtitle Stories Author Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires