Heads of the Colored People(53)

AUTHOR’S NOTE


I would be remiss if I did not give credit for the title of this collection—and its titular story—to the writers who inspired it. The original “?‘The Heads of the Colored People,’ Done with a Whitewash Brush” was written by James McCune Smith, under the pen name Communipaw. Smith created a long-running series of sketches similar to those mentioned in this collection’s opening story and similar to the works of his contemporaries William J. Wilson (who wrote his own series of sketches called The Afric-American Picture Gallery mentioned in “Heads”) and Jane Rustic (a.k.a. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper), a prolific black writer, abolitionist, and feminist. These writers published widely, often serializing their work in Frederick Douglass’s Paper, The Anglo-African Magazine, and The Christian Recorder. Some of these works have since been anthologized in volumes like A Brighter Coming Day, edited by Frances Smith Foster. The sketches, first introduced to me in the work of the scholar Derrick R. Spires, narrate black life from the mundane to the obscure and span the didactic to the macabre.

This collection departs in most ways from the original content of the nineteenth-century black writers’ sketches. The stories presented here do not follow the brevity of the sketch form. And while Smith, Wilson, and Watkins Harper were trying to theorize what it would mean for black people to have the full rights of citizenship, the black people in this collection have, on paper, full rights under the law. But 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. The stories herein also play with the theme of “Heads” broadly, considering literal heads as well as leadership and psychology. And as should be clear, this collection is just as preoccupied with black bodies and the betrayals of those bodies—both external and internal—as it is with heads.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


First, I want to thank God for this opportunity and divine timing and for the many people who helped make this collection possible: Derrick, my husband, I’m so proud of you and grateful for your ongoing love, support, and your brilliant work; my parents, Rufus and Dr. Gail Thompson, who kept books in my hands and love in our home and served as my first mentors, publicists, and editors; my siblings, NaChé and Stephen Thompson, and my nephews Iveren and Isaiah for keeping me laughing; my aunt and uncle Tracy and Thomas Harkless, my mother-in-law, Daisy Spires, and my aunt Merlene Walker for being cheerleaders and sending me useful things like avocados and flannel sheets; and my godmother Margaret Goss, who encouraged me to be a writer.

Friends, you are invaluable, especially Selena Brown.

Donika Kelly, Destiny Birdsong, Nikki Spigner, and Deborah Lilton, thank you for providing a safe space for our writing and yoga—and Petal Samuel and Kaneesha Parsard for enriching and shaping that space as it evolved.

Leah Rae-Mittelmeier Soule, Natalie Inman, Valencia Moses, Elizabeth Barnett, Diana Bellonby, Matt Duques, Jasper Spires, Adrienne Coney, Debbie Harris, Shirleen Robinson, and Emily August, thank you for supporting me and my work.

To my many teachers, thanks for all you have sown into me: longtime mentors Paul D. Young, Carolyn Dever, and Dana Nelson, who nurtured me and Derrick through graduate school and beyond, listened to me talk ad nauseam about Degrassi and other Canadian things, and in some cases even gave us homemade pasta sauce; Ravi Howard and Jacinda Townsend, who workshopped a few of these stories and taught me to empathize more with my characters; Lorraine Lopez, Tony Earley, and Alice Randall, who provided excellent professional advice during my earliest days of creative writing; U of Illinois faculty mentors and colleagues Alex Shakar, Audrey Petty, LeAnne Howe, Steve Davenport, Janice Harrington, Robert Dale Parker, Candice Jenkins, and Ronald Bailey for believing in my work; the U of I departments of African-American Studies and Creative Writing more generally; and Mrs. Colleen Farley and Ms. Sandy Alps, my middle school and high school English teachers, respectively, who contributed to my love of writing.

Many thanks to the colleagues and friends who have workshopped these stories and other writing, particularly Avery Irons, Roya Khatiblou, Greg Rodgers, Kristin Walters, Nolan Grieve, and Katherine Scott Nelson; the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and Callaloo friends in general, especially Marame Gueye, Kiietti Walker-Parker, Toni Ann Johnson, Baleja Saidi, Anya Lewis Meeks, and Courtney Moffett-Bateau; all the Binders who have taught me things every day online and at BinderCon; and Allison Wallis.

Thanks to the magazine editors and writers who published individual stories, judged them in contests, or invited me to read, including Stefanie Sobelle, Arielle Silver, Joanne Yi, Medaya Ocher, Lisa Beth Fulgham, Suzannah Windsor, Reem Al-Omari, Caleb Daniel Curtiss, Paul Lisicky, Stephanie Manuzak, Michael Sakoda, Jeff Chon, Jennine Capó Crucet, Peter Orner, and Mat Johnson.

Special thanks to Keith Wilson for letting me paraphrase his Facebook post about how black women die off camera and to Peter Hudson for saying “black crazy” in my presence but not about me.

With so much gratitude, thank you to my wonderful agent, Anna Stein, for believing in this project and editing it before it went out into the world and answering my many anxious emails, and on top of that giving me free books; to Madison Newbound, who has been very helpful and kind; to Mary Marge Locker, who worked on the book in its early days; to all the people at ICM who have made this happen; to Jensen Beach for putting me in touch with Anna and convincing me that short stories are still worth writing; and to my awesome co-agent Sophie Lambert, who sold the book in the UK; and all the folks at Conville and Walsh.