Book #12 - The Department of Historical Corrections
Content warning: violence, homicide, racism
My twelfth book in the 2022+ challenge is The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans. The book satisfies Category 15, a short story collection.
The book
This is a short story collection with a novella at the end, which shares its title with the book. The stories look at race and how we reckon with our past from various angles.
The novella concerns a woman who works for a fictitious government agency, sarcastically dubbed "The Office of Historical Corrections" by its detractors. The purpose of this agency is to correct historically inaccurate information in public places. For instance, early in the story, the protagonist issues a correction to a bakery that conflates Juneteenth with the Emancipation Proclamation.
The premise starts off humorously enough, but things turn darker when a rogue former employee of the agency travels to a small Wisconsin town to confront a violent racist incident of the past, where some descendants of the perpetrators are now prominent members of the community.
What I liked
The stories covered a wide range of experiences, which I almost always appreciate. More specifically, the characters didn't all come from the same economic and educational backgrounds. We need more stories about working-class people and Evans gives us some good ones.
Several of Evans’s stories concern the overeducated and underemployed, and I didn’t only find them compelling because I very much identify with that situation. There’s a tendency in fiction to gloss over economic realities (spoiler alert: your favorite TV characters probably couldn't have afforded their fancy apartments on the likely earnings for their professions, especially in a city as expensive as New York), and I appreciate how Evans addresses them without feeling like you’re being hit over the head about it.
What I didn't like
A couple of the stories felt more like slices of life than stories per se. It feels like such “stories” have become more common in short stories published in the last few years, and I’d be curious to know if anybody has any insight on that. Maybe it’s a move away from structure in the same way that poetry no longer requires fixed meter and music has explored different relationships to melody and harmony. Slice-of-life stories often leave me frustrated because I don’t know what to think of them, but then maybe that’s the point.
Overall verdict
This is one of my favorite books that I’ve read for this challenge, as I liked most of the stories very much, more than enough to outweigh the one or two I wasn't as excited about. I'd love to see a movie adaptation of the novella. I can totally see Issa Rae in the lead role.
What's next?
The next book I’m going to discuss in this challenge is Kismet by Amina Akhtar. This satisfies Category 19, a novel with more than one point of view.
How important is it for you to incorporate different perspectives into your reading? Leave your thoughts in the comments!