Short stories
Neighbors and Other Stories
We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Diane Oliver, on your first book!
Get your first book for $5 with code PETALS at checkout.
Join today!We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Diane Oliver, on your first book!
This newly discovered classic explores the intimate, everyday moments and horrors found in life under Jim Crow.
Social issues
Literary
Marriage issues
Serious
A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver’s insightful stories reverberate into the present day.
There’s the nightmarish “The Closet on the Top Floor” in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; “Mint Juleps not Served Here” where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; “Spiders Cry without Tears” in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school.
These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.
The most beloved corner of my personal library belongs to short story collections. There’s something special about the intimacy of short stories, bringing us so close to worlds and people not our own. And that is exactly what Neighbors and Other Stories does. These stories record the mundane horrors but also moments of respite and conviviality experienced by Black people within the Jim Crow era from the perspective of someone who experienced it.
This window into a bygone era can be a challenging read at times. But it is hard to look away, and we shouldn’t. This is our history and inheritance, a time and culture that continues to reverberate today. Each story provides a different angled view on the texture and sound of this period and its racial order. One story follows a woman abandoned by her husband who must make an arduous journey to the hospital. Another follows a Black family who secludes themselves deep in a forest in an attempt to find safety. Or there is the upstairs-downstairs story of two very different Black families connected nonetheless by marriage. Together this collection forms a troubling but beautifully rendered tapestry.
Diane Oliver died tragically at age 22 without having seen these stories published. This is their first time being shared with a wide audience and what a gift to our present. They are evocative, incisive, and deeply humane. It is a collection that I’m so glad to have added to my shelves, and you should follow suit.
Christi M.
Aurora, CO
Neighbors and Other Stories is a collection of short stories about various people navigating race and racism in the 1950’s and 60’s. Not one story had a happy ending. How could it? But, not all great
Sadra L.
San Marino, CA
These short stories are a treasure to be shared! My favorite was Mint Juleps Not Served Here about a social worker coming to a family’s home. I’m so glad that these stories were published. Must read!
Elliot W.
Marshalltown, IA
Diane Oliver sits with Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zoe’s Neale Hurston as one of the best authors of the century. The stories run you ragged with joy and sorrow, hope and despair. Worth reading.
Maggie S.
Topeka, KS
Incredibly thought-provoking stories from a very talented author, gone far too young. Oliver offers snapshots of ordinary life in the 1960s South, with unsettling details that reveal its true nature.
Crystal G.
Rock port, MO
Love all of these stories told from different points of view and in different eras. Everyone needs to hear stories such as these so that they can understand the plight of the people that lived them.