A review by alexwatsonreads
Heads of the Colored People, by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

5.0

A master class in short story craft - the stories treat mundane moments, like waiting in frustration at the DMV, as opportunities for revelations about pain and identity. It takes a deft hand to use humor while also treating seriously issues of mental health, grief, and black trauma in particular. I especially liked the stories that clustered around a set of characters, like Fatima, who is one of two black girls at her high school and who is deeply self conscious about what it means to be black and (upper) middle class in the contemporary U.S. It was intriguing to follow the bread crumbs to see how different characters fit together - I would have been happy with even more of that overlap. It makes me excited to read more fiction from the author.