Danielle Evans’ first story collection, BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF, was a critical favorite, garnering awards and gaining her recognition as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees after its publication in 2010. Now, 10 years later, Evans is back with a much-anticipated follow-up, THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS, which contains a half-dozen exquisite short stories and the equally memorable title novella.

As she did in her earlier book, Evans focuses her attention largely on characters who are young, Black and figuring out their place in this country, often while also navigating a more personal terrain of love and loss. “The Office of Historical Corrections,” as its name suggests, is concerned most directly with righting the wrongs of history, in a narrative that skillfully walks the line between satire and reality (a line that is all too blurry in 2020!).

"Evans’ stories are emotionally authentic and perceptive, extraordinarily accomplished in their approach to characterization and theme, and refreshingly free of gimmicks."

In the alternate reality posited by this novella, the federal government once started a job-protection program of sorts for PhDs in the humanities, offering them public service jobs if they were unable to find tenure-track positions in academia. By the time the story picks up, the program has diminished drastically due to lack of funding; its only vestige is the Institute for Public History, whose staff members --- like the narrator, Cassie --- have a mission to identify historical inaccuracies on signs, in textbooks and, most importantly, on public monuments and plaques, casting light on the real victims and villains of history. Cassie is sent reluctantly to a one-time “sundown town” outside Milwaukee in order to rein in her colleague/frenemy Genevieve, who has become a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to righting historical wrongs.

The opening story, “Happily Ever After,” also touches on representations of history, as a young woman employed at the gift shop in a replica of the Titanic flirts with stardom when she’s invited to participate in a music video shoot on the ship. In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Claire, a clueless white undergraduate, finds herself at the center of a political firestorm on her campus when she thoughtlessly wears a Confederate flag bikini on spring break and then even more thoughtlessly lashes out at her Black dormmate who objects when a photo goes viral.

Throughout, these considerations of our country’s history are intertwined with the more personal history of the characters Evans so sensitively draws. For many, that history centers on tragedies of loss and grief. Even clueless Claire of #badbikiniideas fame has a complicated backstory that helps illuminate her (admittedly complicated) response to current events. In the gut-wrenching story “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” a young woman’s family tragedy colors her own response to her friends’ impending wedding. In what is perhaps the most emotionally devastating story, “Anything Could Disappear,” a young woman on the verge of starting over finds her life changing almost unimaginably when she becomes the caretaker of a toddler abandoned on a cross-country Greyhound bus.

Evans’ stories are emotionally authentic and perceptive, extraordinarily accomplished in their approach to characterization and theme, and refreshingly free of gimmicks. The pieces collected here feel both perfectly of the moment and classic, the kinds of stories that students will be studying and cherishing decades from now in order to understand not only the work of a skillful practitioner of the craft but also this particular moment in our nation’s history.