the office of historical corrections by danielle evans

the i paper 1 april 2021

Danielle Evans, who published her 2010 story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self to great acclaim and has fans including Alicia Keys and Roxane Gay, has said she writes long, rather than short, stories – and this new collection certainly provides space to explore knotty subject matter.

In “Boys Go to Jupiter”, a picture of a white college student wearing a Confederate flag bikini goes viral. The image antagonises her black hallmate Carmen, who reposts it, and Claire – the bikini wearer – receives angry, supportive and even pornographic messages.

Carmen moves dorm for her own safety, but Evans writes the story from the point of view of Claire, showing the way in which a social media storm can develop its own momentum: “Her student account’s address has been posted on several message boards and #clairewilliamsvacationideas is a locally trending topic (Auschwitz, My Lai, Wounded Knee).”

The coruscating feminism of another story, “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want”, is brilliantly executed. A high-profile artist has wronged scores of women, from ex-wives to a personal assistant and his daughter, so he begins issuing apologies to them via billboards.

It is in the specificity here that Evans shines, not least when those deemed worthy of an apology extend to “The Girl Who Wondered All Those Years What to Call What Had Happened Between Them Because Yeah She Had Intended to Have Sex with Him but She Hadn’t Intended It to Happen Like That and She Hadn’t Expected Him to Hurt Her but Not Notice or Care or Stop”. Another woman realises “she hadn’t specifically told him she wanted to be treated like a person”.

This idea of personhood being under siege recurs throughout the collection, not least in the title story when Cassie, a black woman, mentions “the do they know I’m human yet question that hummed in me every time I met a new white person”. Cassie works for the Institute for Public History, an organisation initially called the Office of Historical Corrections by its detractors but the name has now been adopted as an office joke. Its purpose is to protect and promote historical accuracy as a remedy for decades of misinformation and the bad faith use of it.

Evans makes important points about race and history, but this is not to undermine the lightness of her touch – a vodka cocktail called a “Marxist” appears while Cassie dates “a string of men who were all very sad about some quality in themselves that they had no intention of making any effort to change.” It is only as you reach the end that you realise the razor-sharp stories in this collection are all in dialogue, cleverly and satisfyingly upending notions of victimhood.

This review first appeared in the i paper