The Best American Short Stories 2018: The Finest Literary Fiction in the Premier Annual Collection

The Best American Short Stories 2018 Selected by Roxanne Gay and HeidiPitlor Reviewed by C. J. Singh (Berkeley, California) HEIDI PITLOR, the editor of the series states in her Foreword (page xi): “In last year’s foreword, I wrote about my my reaction to the 2016 presedential election. I received a few letters rquesting that I keep politics out of my job…. As George Orwell wrote in a 1946 essay, ‘The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude’. ” I fully agree with Pitlor. The 2018 book comprises twenty stories; this brief review will comment on three. JOCELYN NICOLE JOHNSON’s short story “Control Negro,” published in Guernica is an 11-page letter by an African-American professor, in his sixties, to his 21-year old biological son, with whom he had never talked face to face, but supported him financially by giving money to his mother married to another. This is not a story of adultery. The married couple had failed to have a child because of a lack in the husband. The mother, an African-American graduate student, made a consensual arrangement of impregnation while remaining married. At the opening of the story, the biological father is a professor of history, the mother a professor of environmental studies, the son an undergrad all three at the same esteemed university. The letter begins (page 167): “By the time you read this, you may have figured it out. Perhaps your mother told you, though she was privy to my timeworn thesis – never my aim or full intention . Still, maybe the truth of it breached your insides: That I am your father, that you are my son. In these typewritten pages, I mean to make manifest the truth, the whole. But please do not mistake this letter for some manner of veiled confession. I cannot afford to be sorry, not for any of it. I hope you’ll come to understand, it was all for a grander good. “You see, I needed a Control Negro, grotesque as that may sound – “You should know I was there on the day you were born, a reflection behind the nursery glass. I laid eyes on you while your mother rested, along with her husband – that man you must have accepted, at least for a time, as your father. You seemed to see me too, my blurred silhouette.” In the letter, Professor Cornelius Adams narrates the humiliations and assaults he had suffered such as at age ten being beaten almost to death by three drunken white young men for no reason other than his being black (page 174). At his job as professor, being handed among student submissions a cartoon titled “Irony,” by an anonymous student “as a history professor leaned over a lectern, looking quite like me – same jacket and bow tie – except with something primitive about his face. A thought bubble hovered over the room of students: ‘Darwin Taught to Men by an Ape’. ” The term “Control” in the story title is standard in social anthropology/psychology experiments as evidence of valid comparisons. Is the hostile behavior of American Caucasion Males (ACMs) toward African Americans because of color or is it because of class and cultural differences? Would a “Control Negro” child raised as a middle-class American and attending an esteemed college be subjected to hostility by ACMs? At the climax of the story, Professor Adams observed (page 177) “wasted students partying on the strip of college bars. I knew this because I’d worked late that night, the first warm evening of spring. I’d decided to walk home through the carnival of youth, and only by chance spotted you out front of that bar on the corner. You were right there in the fray of students, half swaying to music that spilled from an open patio Surprise: “I must tell you now that it was I the one who called the precinct, claiming to have seen a ‘suspicious young man’ at the corner of University and Second. I called but did not specify your height, your color….Son, please believe me if you believe nothing else I’ve written: this was a test for them – for the world!—not for you.” No surprise: The police promptly arrested the black youth, his son, “who seemed dangerous” to them; “pinned him to the pavement,” blood flowing. CRISTINA HENRÎQUEZ’s short story “Everything Is Far from Here” published in The New Yorker is about a Latina group with children crossing the border into Texas. The unnamed main character was forcibly separated from her 5-years’ old son. “The man who was leading them here divided the group. Twelve people drew too much attention, he claimed. He had sectioned off the women, silencing any protest with the back of his hand, swift to the jaw. ‘Do you want to get there or not?’ They did. ‘Trust me,’ he said.” (page 149) She had left her country after her husband was killed and she was raped by a gang of young boys – “boys whose mothers she knew from the neighborhood.” As an asylum seeker, she is interviewed by a lawyer, who asks, “Why do you think they targeted you?” She replies, “I was alone.” The poignant anxiety she suffers from the separation from her son is the central theme of the story. Using third-person close Point of View, the narrator brilliantly succeeds in evoking this reader’s empathy. At night, missing her son, she sometimes screams. Then “the guards come to restrain her. They hold her arms behind her back. They drag her down the hall and put her in a room, a colorless box with spiders in the corners, until she calms down.” “One day, when the air is damp and the sky is mottled and gray, there’s a protest. People outside hold signs that say ILLEGAL IS A CRIME and SEND THEM BACK WITH BIRTH CONTROL. People hold American flags over their shoulders like cape. Superhero Americans. She imagines them at home … laying the poster board on the floor, uncapping markers, drawing the letters, coloring them in.” (pages 153- 54) Daily she sits by the front door waiting for her son. One day, she sees a five-year old boy among the crowd. She hugs the boy. Alas, the boy is not her son, just a look-alike. Soon snatched away by his real mother. As foreshadowed in the title “Everything Is Far from Here,” she accepts her situation. “She will stay in this place, she tells herself, until he comes." ESMÈ WEIJUN WANG’s short story “What Terrible Thing It Was,” published in Granta, is told by a paranoid narrator, whose psychosis excerbates by the 2016 right-wing election victory and what that portends for minorities such as East-Asians like her. The story opens with the first-person narrator, Wendy Chung, hearing the voice of Becky Mei-Hua Guo, a friend of hers, who had been murdered and hung high up a eucalyptus tree in Polk Valley where they lived. Wendy was seventeen at that time. “If she had not been killed in part because of her race, I could as the saying goes, breathe easier, but I could not assure myself of that any more than I could wipe off my own face.” (page 293) Wendy goes to the Wellbrook Psychiatric Hospital for a consult. Dr. Richards recommends ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for her schizphrenia and depression. Wendy says she wants to first talk about this with her husband, Dennis, a good-natured white man. On the bus ride back to Polk Valley, Wendy looks at Twitter to learn how the election is going. “I look briefly at Twitter and see that the man I am afraid will become president has insinuated that it would be best if his supporters harassed people at the polls, particularly people of color; of course, he never says ‘people of color,’ but we know what he means. I click on the tweet and scroll down: ‘Muslim Obama HATES America, LOVES terrerists!’ ” (pages 296-97) Wendy’s regression to her earlier trauma excerbated by the 2016 election suggested in the last paragraph: “In the bathroom where I avoid looking in the mirror – an aver sion to my own face is one of my latest symptoms….I stand at the sink for a long time, until I cannot remember what I am doing; I lose the next move. Suddenly, and too loudly, a girl calls my name.” (page 300). The complete list of stories: 1. Maria Anderson, “Cougar” 2. Jamel Brinkley, “A Family” 3. Yoon Choi, “The Art of Losing” 4. Emma Cline, “Los Angeles” 5. Alicia Elliot “UnEarth” 6. Danielle Evans, “Boys Go to Jupiter” 7. Carolyn Ferrell, “A History of China” 8. Ann Glaviano, “Come on, Silver” 9. Jacob Guajardo, “What Got Into Us” 10. Cristina Henriquez, “Everything Is Far from Here” 11. Kristen Iskandrian, “Good with Boys” 12. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, “Control Negro’ 13. Matthew Loyns, “The Brother Brujo” 14. Dina Nayeri, “A Big True” 15. Tea Obreht, “Items Awaiting Protective Enclosure” 16. Ron Rash, “The Baptism” 17. Amy Silverberg, “Subarbia!” 18. Curtis Sittenfeld, “The Priarie Wife? 19. Rivers Solomon, “What Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver” 20. Esme Weijun Wang, “What Terrible Thing It Was” Five-star book. .

some stories had strong likeable characters, some had modern features like chats and e-mails etc. All in all it was fun but perhaps not as much fun as 2017's.

Don’t let the negative reviewers discourage you.This a fine collection of contemporary short fiction, easily worth four stars, at least. Two of these stories aren’t quite to my taste, but even those two are well-written; and the other eighteen are engaging, creative, fresh, thoughtful, and, for what it’s worth, also grounded in traditional American Realism. So, what’s not to like? Well, the negative reviewers’ complaints here have more to do with politics than with literature. At least one reviewer here condemns a paragraph in editor Roxane Gay’s Introduction by calling it a political “tirade.” I personally read that paragraph a bit differently: as (mostly, anyway) a brief list of some of last year’s headlines, which I thought were entirely appropriate content for the Intro to an annual roundup. Of course, opinions vary, and everyone is entitled to theirs—including Roxane Gay. In fact, since editors are paid to have and exercise opinions, even if Gay’s paragraph really were a “tirade,” she had a right and even a duty to express herself. But I don’t want to dwell on that, because the real problem here is larger: reviewers seeking to vilify Gay are also attempting to vilify dozens of other people, if not an entire artistic and intellectual community. They are using both Gay, and this collection, as “straw dogs” in a culture war. The principal allegation in most of the negative reviews is this three-parter: (1) not one of the twenty stories Gay selected for this collection has any literary merit at all; (2) therefore Gay cannot have chosen these stories for their literary merits; and, (3) she therefore can only have chosen them based on her political biases. None of that bears scrutiny, however. The first part of it—the part about literary merit—is easily disproven: it’s a given that each of these stories first appeared in one of our most prestigious literary magazines, which obviously means that all twenty were first recognized for their literary excellence by editors other than Gay. The stories were only available for Gay to select for this collection because each had already been very favorably judged by others who are, presumably, known and respected in both literary and academic circles. Accordingly, the negative reviewers have the entire burden of proof in this matter, because those who admire the stories have already spoken. So, how do the nay-sayers handle their burden of proof? They simply ignore it. In fact I saw no evidence that even one of the negative reviewers had actually read any of these stories. None of the negative reviews feature thoughtful discussions of plot or of characterization, let alone a quotation from one of the stories, some that ostensibly proves its author’s atrocious performance. Accordingly, we’re expected to accept the negative judgment based faith alone, and presumably because it accords with our politics. I mean that the negative ratings seem to be based on political bias alone, which if I’m mistaken means that the negative reviewers are doing exactly the same thing that they accuse Gay of having done: judging these twenty stories based, not on their literary merits, but only on the basis of political bias. I’ll let you decide for yourself if that makes the negatives reviewers here hypocrites, not in; in either the fact remains that the nay-sayers fail—in fact don’t even try—to prove that these stories lack literary merit; and if we therefore agree with those who believe that the stories do have literary merit, we must reject as absurd the contention that Gay selected them for this collection despite a lack of literary merit. I want to say explicitly that I consider only two of these stories are actually political in nature—that is, more political than, say, Pride and Prejudice—and neither of those two are “preachy.” Accordingly, what the negative reviewers probably perceive in these stories as “political”—and more than that: in fact, offensively political—is human diversity: the fact that not all of these stories are all about whites (although, some are); or straights (although, most are); or men, rather than women. Here’s a brief example: in one of these stories, the protagonists are Korean-American. But that story is about people confronting Alzheimer’s, which is neither a “Korean” issue, nor a “political” issue; it’s simply a human issue. Does the mere fact that two characters in a story are ethnic Koreans make that story “political,” necessarily? Perhaps in the sense that “everything is political,” but diversity is, after all, not a statement (much less a rebellion!) but simply a fact. And how could it be “political” when a Korean-American author (presumably following the tenet “Write about what you know”) writes about Korean-American characters, but non-political, or politically “neutral,” when a white American writer writes about white American characters? And not to put too fine a point on it, for a story to be about Korean Americans does not, in and of itself, constitute an absence of literary merit.

First of all, these stories are all incredibly well-written. Every single story in this collection was carefully chosen, I'm sure primarily for the amazing writing each of these writers contributed. I am not a reader who is hugely focused on writing itself, but it is undeniable in this collection just how excellent the writing is. I hate to give such a beautiful collection a rating less than 4 stars but for me many of these stories were not the kind of story I personally connect with. The stories themselves are all incredibly raw, gritty, some have supernatural elements, some have dystopian elements, and some are just downright depressing, so much darker than the type of dark story I typically want to read. I love Roxane Gay's writing but she is definitely on the darker side too, and these stories were completely in her wheelhouse - the selections made complete sense to me. But I didn't personally love most of them other than the truly great writing.

One of my favs. Lovely collection

Roxane Gay's selections are knocking me flat. Their relevance, voice, and heartbreak are staggering, and several are crafted with prose that is beautiful to read. I'm going to carry each of these stories with me for some time and I'm so immensely grateful to their authors. To tackle these subjects with such grace and vision leaves me with a kind of reverence, not only for the craft, but for the people living the lives wherein these stories are not "political agenda" but people's everyday lives.

Some were better than others, but all well written. I like to read with my morning coffee; short stories are perfect for this

I read this anthology every year. Yes, as other customers have pointed out, Roxane Gay's point of view is reflected in her choice of stories, but I feel strongly that this *adds* a dimension, not detracts or subtracts! We had decades of stories about the white (often wealthy) experience, with a few notable exceptions. Then Junot Diaz in 2017 and Roxane Gay in 2018 expanded the diversity of this series and opened us to new authors, characters, themes, backgrounds, experiences. In my view, the quality has not suffered. These are excellent stories, many of them electric and memorable.

It's easy to see why this anthology is as it is. The best stories are indeed included. Wide variety of subject matter and well written.