Friday Black

Short stories. You don't come across them that often any more, which is a shame. A good short story will give you the immersion in the life or personality of a character, a nice story arch and a good ending in less than thirty pages. I love reading short stories, especially after finishing a long and difficult novel.
I read a review of Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah a while ago and decided this was a short story collection I had to read. Then I came across a hardcover version in the local bookstore that had such a beautiful cover image I absolutely had to buy it (I could add something witty about judging books by their cover here). I don't usually buy hardcovers anymore, but I gladly made an exception here.
The review said this was a great new voice in the world of short stories, focussing on the experiences of black Americans, but also very forward in his ideas. Now I'm not sure if all of that is true. The stories are beautifully written, they read quickly and easily, you get into the mind of the main character (most stories are written in the first person) pretty quickly. There are no great messages or grand resolutions; people live their lives in no particular way, but in that way he somewhat reminded me of Roald Dahl's stories.
Several of  the stories revolve around people working in retail, including the title story Friday Black. These were nice, but not all that special; they even got a bit repetitive at some point. Then there were the more 'black lives matter' inspired stories, such as the opening story of Finkelstein 5; a white man murders 5 innocent black teenagers, gets aquitted in court, and in response black activists start murdering white people. This reads like a gruesome story (and it was), but the main character, whose loyalties are devided between joining his friends and 'fitting in' in society (he dials his 'Blackness' up and down on a scale of 1 to 10 depending on how he wants people to perceive him) gives it some much-needed depth and focus. Finally, there are a couple of science fictiony stories, usually taking place in an altered, somewhat dystopian, future. This may be a world in which people genetically perfect their children before they are born, or a world in which people relive the same day of nuclear warfare over and over again. These I thought were the best; inventive in plot, with fleshed-out characters while at the same time also containing a social warning; this is what our world might become.
But the scifi were also the best because they weren't too niched on promoting the black experience. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but those stories somehow felt narrower, lacking in creativity and depth of character. As if those characters were defined only by the fact that they were black. Whereas in the more futuristic stories (although also in Finkelstein 5) the protagonists shared more universal experiences, they were a person more than they were a black person. It didn't matter what colour skin they had, as it should be.
In short, this was one of the better short story collections I've read in a while. I hope Adjei-Brenyah continues to write short stories, or perhaps a novel, although in my opinion writing a good short story is more difficult than writing a good novel!