What a funny idea on the part of Buchet Chastel editions to offer us the publication of a collection of short stories written more than sixty years ago! We tend to say that good writing never gets old, that it is always relevant and modern. This is obviously the case with this work of Diane Olivera black American writer, who grew up in North Carolina.
After attending segregated schools, she graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1960. Died accidentally at the age of 22, she published four short stories during her lifetime and two came out after her death.
The neighbors and the other short stories in this collection brought to us by Buchet Chastel editions reveal the full extent of the talent of Diane Oliver, aged around twenty at the time of writing. They represent a powerful and surprisingly acute description of the America of Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws dating from 1871 were national and local laws stemming from the Black Codes imposing racial segregation in the United States.
In his different texts, all filled with a tension which recalls as well Hitchcock what Shirley Jacksonit shows everything to the reader without stating or commenting on anything. We follow these lives that respond to each other with bated breath, from Tommy, the little boy sent to a white school under threats, to young Helen who participates in a sit-in in a café forbidden to blacks.
The work allows the reader to understand an era, not a glorious one I admit, showing us the daily life of these populations affected by segregation. A segregation that the author describes to us, devoid of any activism on her part.
Obviously, and this is often the case for collections of short stories, we will easily see that these short stories are not all of the same quality. Some are more gripping, releasing more emotions than others. They take a different look at the condition of black populations, some through the prism of emotion while others look towards a more offbeat prism, sometimes with a lot of humor.
So there you have it, I, who am not a big fan of short stories, took pleasure in discovering this work and this author whom I did not know. Reading this book, one cannot help but be convinced that good literature is immortal.
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