i found this book exceptional. do you remember when jhumpa lahiri debuted with Interpreter of Maladies and everyone went WHOA? Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is that good, though i'll be surprised if everyone goes WHOA, because, let's face it, the readership for young African American female writers is different from the readership for young Asian American female writers. and by different i don't only mean different, but i mean smaller, something i invite all readers of this teensy ickl...

After reading Evans's more recent collection, The Office of Historical Corrections, I was eager to go back and read her first book, another work of short fiction. These 8 stories have similar tones to her latest work, showing Evans has had a clear, strong vision from the start.I particularly loved the story "Snakes" as well as "Jellyfish." These ones, for me, had a great mix of plot and action with interesting character descriptions. Evans has a steady hand when creating characters, doling out

Suffocate is a collection of short stories about the Black experience in America. Every story dealt with a sensitive and taboo subject (especially within the African American community). Virginity, abortion, and post traumatic stress disorder are just a few of the subjects Suffocate discusses.Some of the stories (Snakes, Harvest, Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go), are spectacular. As with most short stories, you are left with a sense of longing. You're left wanting more. You NEED

Short stories are interesting to me...I prefer novels, and I think that the general consensus is that in the world of fiction, short stories are not the first things people gravitate towards...That being said, it takes a fabulous collection like this to make a reader understand what constitutes a great short story: unbelievably strong and fully realized characters placed in scenarios that test them as humans, but different from a novel in that the moment of the dramatic shift, the climactic reve...

4.5Man... the longing, the melancholy, the impossible other reality, the sense of anger, despair, the battle with your own fool self against everything else... Man, was it unbearable at time.

Danielle Evans is like a breath of fresh air in the current offerings of short fiction. Her stories are in the here and now, told by your friends and neighbors whose voices are rarely heard. Evans has an exquisite talent at evoking the true essence of a character with just a few swift strokes. A few of the later stories (Jellyfish, Wherever You Go) tend to bog down in an overwritten explanation of an extremely grafted family tree, reading more like a diary entry than prose, but her best stories

"I didn't feel anymore like being myself was something for which I owed the world an apology." That brilliant quote, ladies and gentleman, is from Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Specifically from my favorite story, Robert E. Lee is dead. I related to this story the most, because I too felt ostracized for being the smart black girl and quiet. All of the stories were great and really made you think about life, the human condition and how our view on life greatly affects how we live.At fi...

I was excited to read this after coming across an AV Club Review calling it “a remarkable short-story collection in a good year for short-story collections.” But what made me especially eager to read it was something the reviewer said that didn’t sit right with me: "The biggest issue with Suffocate is that nearly every story features a similar protagonist. Evans writes this protagonist—a young African-American or mixed-race woman who’s trapped between her past and a more promising future—extreme...

The first two short stories in this collection literally had me making noises on my couch. Throughout Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans shares the pains, intimacies, and moments of (dis)connection that make adolescence and young adulthood so rife with feeling. In the first story, “Virgins,” I literally laughed so hard at the dialogue, before experiencing a quiet yet profound sadness at the ways in which the young female narrator comes to understand the many degrees of dange...

My favorite book of the year. It was such a satisfying, well-written collection with these awesome stories I keep wanting to read over and over again.

I usually have trouble loving short story collections but this one really won me over. Evans has constructed each story on large than life characters that we care about immediately. I've never read short stories like that before. The stories are longer than the usual 5-7 pages and maybe that's why I had the chance to really get into each story. The themes vary from race, to women issues to family and so forth. This is definitely 4,5 stars. I'm docking it a half star because I just didn't want it...

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4 ½ stars Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is a fantastic collection of short stories. Having loved Evans' latest release, The Office of Historical Corrections, I had high hopes for this first collection and it did not disappoint. Each short story delivers, there isn't one 'weak' or boring story. Although they explore similar themes and subjects they offer different perspectives and or they reach contrasting conclusions. Evans' combines heart-rendering sce...

If you, like me, have been picking books up for weeks, starting them & realizing about 30 pages that you do not care whatsoever about what is going on (Constant Gardener I am looking in your direction), perhaps you should give this book a try. It is scrumptious and excellent and has renewed my faith in the printed word. Thank you, Danielle Evans. Now hurry up and write some more stuff, please.

Nothing goes as we plan; storms. volcanoes, locusts, viruses. What makes a normal life when you add to all that being Black in the USA?Danielle Evans’ stories are all about the catastrophic danger of living a life - subject to parents, subject to children, subject to the daily aggressions of racism - and still trying to decide for oneself instead of accepting the foregone conclusion of one's story. They are about the expectations of young Black women, of friendships forged in wartime (high schoo...

Some of these stories are among the best I've read. I was completely blown away by the first couple and the last few. Everything in the middle is great, too. Overall, it's an amazing collection and I'm in love with the way Danielle Evans writes.

4.5 rounded downSo good - Evans is a modern master of the short story. Almost as good as The Office of Historical Corrections, but that was always going to be very difficult to beat, being one of my favourite short story collections ever. I can't wait for her next book!

I hope Danielle Evans is a very nice person because that might be her only defense against other writers' seething envy. At 26, this D.C.-area author has already graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, earned praise from Salman Rushdie and Richard Russo, and appeared in two (two!) volumes of "Best American Short Stories." Now comes the publication of her first collection, "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," eight quietly devastating stories that validate the hype. No, she's not the Ame...

This book has a collection of 8 short stories. These are the following: "Virgins," "Snakes," "Harvest," "Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go," "The King of a Vast Empire," "Jellyfish," "Wherever You Go, There You Are," and "Robert E. Lee is Dead."If I have to pick my favorite short story I think I am going to have to go with "Robert E. Lee is Dead." That's because the main protagonist of that story reminded me of my school days as the "smart one" in my high school. It was tricky for

I’m sick of mediating with your worst selfOn behalf of your better selvesI am sickOf having to remind youTo breatheBefore you suffocateYour own fool self Donna Kate Rushin from "The Bridge Poem"Having read Evans' stellar second collection of short stories, The Office of Historical Corrections, a few months ago, I was eager to get ahold of her first collection. This compilation was almost as good. Here her characters are younger, more vulnerable and not as angry. In Before You Suffocate Your Own

In these stories about the liminal years between childhood and becoming a so-called "grown-up," there is not much hindsight, but rather an immediacy as we follow girls and young women who are intelligent, gutsy, and Black. Racism and micro-aggressions are threaded through most of the stories, but they claim a universality as well - the pitfalls of coming of age in 21st century America. Not all of the stories pack a punch, but those that do, have a wallop to them.