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Meet Behind Mars
"I feel like I can't tell one story about a giant mustard penis because it's not about a mustard penis only, but about all of these incidents together, in context, and through time." So begins the title story in Renee Simms's debut short story collection, Meet Behind Mars—a revealing look at how geography, memory, ancestry, and desire influence our personal relationships.
In many of her stories, Simms exposes her own interest in issues concerning time and space. For example, in "Rebel Airplanes," an L.A. engineer works by day on city sewers and by night on R-C planes that she yearns to launch into the cosmos. The character-driven stories in Meet Behind Mars offer beautiful insight into the emotional lives of caretakers, auto workers, dancers, and pawn shop employees. In "High Country," a frustrated would-be novelist considers ditching her family in the middle of the desert. In "Dive," an adoptee returns to her adoptive home, still haunted by histories she does not know. Simms writes from the voice of women and girls who struggle under structural oppression and draws from the storytelling tradition best represented by writers like Edward P. Jones, whose characters have experiences that are specific to black Americans living in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One instance of this is in "The Art of Heroine Worship," in which black families integrate into a white suburb of Detroit in the 1970s.
The stories in this collection span forty years and two continents and range in structure from epistolary to traditionally structured realism, with touches of absurdity, humor, and magic. Meet Behind Mars will appeal to readers interested in contemporary literary fiction.
In many of her stories, Simms exposes her own interest in issues concerning time and space. For example, in "Rebel Airplanes," an L.A. engineer works by day on city sewers and by night on R-C planes that she yearns to launch into the cosmos. The character-driven stories in Meet Behind Mars offer beautiful insight into the emotional lives of caretakers, auto workers, dancers, and pawn shop employees. In "High Country," a frustrated would-be novelist considers ditching her family in the middle of the desert. In "Dive," an adoptee returns to her adoptive home, still haunted by histories she does not know. Simms writes from the voice of women and girls who struggle under structural oppression and draws from the storytelling tradition best represented by writers like Edward P. Jones, whose characters have experiences that are specific to black Americans living in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One instance of this is in "The Art of Heroine Worship," in which black families integrate into a white suburb of Detroit in the 1970s.
The stories in this collection span forty years and two continents and range in structure from epistolary to traditionally structured realism, with touches of absurdity, humor, and magic. Meet Behind Mars will appeal to readers interested in contemporary literary fiction.
244 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2018
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1379 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 15, 2018
Outstanding short story collection. Excellent characterization in each story. I loved the range of characters and their circumstances as well as the settings from Detroit to Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest. Very efficient narrative style. Crisp, confident storytelling. By far one of the best collections of the year.
September 17, 2018
4.5 stars
This little book of short stories has been compared stylistically to the works of Toni Cade Bambara and Edward P. Jones. I would probably throw in Rion Amilcar Scott as another fine example of what you’ll find in these pages. Although those are heavy shoes to fill, Renee Simms with this collection, is uniquely qualified to fill them and does it with aplomb.
These are realistic, slice of life stories of African Americans in mostly ordinary situations. There’s an assortment of moods to fill your palate here: magical realism - check; epistolary- check; humorous- check; racial issues - check; grief and heartbreak - check & check.
My only regret in reading this collection is I read the entire book straight through. I typically prefer to read a selection and let it marinate for awhile. However, I was enjoying these stories too much and wanted to get back to them. My favorite short story collection of the year so far.
Highly recommended.
4.5 stars
This little book of short stories has been compared stylistically to the works of Toni Cade Bambara and Edward P. Jones. I would probably throw in Rion Amilcar Scott as another fine example of what you’ll find in these pages. Although those are heavy shoes to fill, Renee Simms with this collection, is uniquely qualified to fill them and does it with aplomb.
These are realistic, slice of life stories of African Americans in mostly ordinary situations. There’s an assortment of moods to fill your palate here: magical realism - check; epistolary- check; humorous- check; racial issues - check; grief and heartbreak - check & check.
My only regret in reading this collection is I read the entire book straight through. I typically prefer to read a selection and let it marinate for awhile. However, I was enjoying these stories too much and wanted to get back to them. My favorite short story collection of the year so far.
Highly recommended.
4.5 stars
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May 1, 2018HER STORY: parallels and nuances of Black Female Experiences in Reene Simm’s Meet Behind Mars
Meet Behind Mars is a well-crafted, well presented collection of eleven short stories that vary in length, style, voices, situations and personalities.
I had completed a novel less than a week before starting Meet Behind Mars, and whereas the previous novel felt drawn out and boring, frankly, with a main character I could not connect with or come to like in any way, I surely enjoyed the change of pace and style that this new book brought to my reading experience.
I had mentioned earlier that this book had variance upon its pages. This is the main reason for my loving it so. I found it genius that author, Renee Simms, provided:
Multiplicity of POVs
I’m talking about protagonist’s tales being revealed in 1st, 3rd and even 2nd person. It was a refreshing feeling each time I encountered a new heroine and a new story as I knew that I would get interesting tales, seen from different angles. I would marvel at how the choice of using varying POVs realistically illustrates how different persons have internal dialogues with themselves, and how persons differ in the way they process their environments around them. When I got to the tale in 2nd person, at one point, I felt myself falling into the pages, as my eyes ran over all the “you(s)” in lines and the protagonist kept telling me what I have done, or ought to do. It was a nice, amusing and surreal feeling to feel so involved in her story.
Multiplicity of Personalities and Voices
No one person is or speaks the same as the other. This collection stayed true to that fact. I mean, yea you have people (we see them all the time on Youtube, and TV shows and Sitcoms etc.) who can do voice impersonations and all, but in the end, that person is a fake! And so, as I was saying, each character in Meet Behind Mars has her own personality and voice, albeit some more pleasant to me than others (and so will be the case for you I suppose). On these pages I met women who were mothers, spouses, daughters, students, writers, lecturers, teachers, researchers, engineers, travellers, victims and survivors. These voices are sometimes simultaneously, and other times contrastingly: soft and unassertive, fearful and reserved, uncertain and fickle, sarcastic and humourous, aware and outspoken, hopeful and resilient.
Multiplicity of Style
Can you imagine my pleasant surprise when the opening story turns out to be magical realism, after self-reflexively typing the heroine’s own creative work within the tale as being exactly that? At this point I was already hooked. Like me, thereafter, you will be taken on a journey. You’ll fall into a world of magical realism; become a witness to episodic email recollections; be privy to the world view of a child; become someone’s puppet in a tale that forces you to do as the protagonist asks, foretells or directs; be a critical reader of a PhD proposal; and of course be an observer to tales told as traditional realism. There is absolutely no way for you to be bored; your minds will stretch as wide and as confidently as these tales do.
Variance in Tense Usage
In a space that forced me to interact with varying tenses across 132 pages, I’ve come to realize that I may have a personal favourite for the present tense. It became that as I was murmuring the words on the pages, I gave the story life. Well that’s how I felt about the heroine’s tale in “Dive”. I felt her unfiltered preoccupations and expressions, and she felt relatable and real; her experience important for me to know. Then of course, there are the stories in the usual presentation of past tense. Spoken in retrospect, we are privy to a woman’s reflective process. We learn and are enlightened as much as she is/was. Where she has suffered, we understand and/or feel her pain. And if she has matured, we feel her growth.
The most powerful thing I felt from these choices by Simms though was this: from the present tense to the past tense usage, it remains that the experiences of Black women have always been: challenging, frustrating, controversial, rewarding, inspiring, but ultimately relevant.
Multiplicity of Experiences
But experiences which ultimately any Black woman can, will, or has faced in her lifetime. Simms touches on an assortment of thematically relevant topics:
motherhood and marriage: the self-sacrifice of women, for the ultimate success of family and spouse and unfortunate stagnation of self;
mother-son relationships: mothers doing all to grow, educate, support and protect sons;
self-fulfillment: the desire but challenge to attain such; the issue of uncertainty of self being Black and being Female; the issue of voicelessness, whether it be in determining one’s own voice in the process of writing her story or in the actual dialogues she attempts to have with male bodies in her life;
identity crisis: the struggle (internal and external) re. the acceptance of one’s racial, artistic and or female self;
beauty dilemma: being too Black, and not possessing enough European type features; being too conservative and plain, and not sexy and secular enough; the balancing act between appearing modest but sexy, sexy but not raunchy or loose;
racial integration, whether it be from interracial coupling or biracial or multiracial environments of existing (school, work);
madness: being victim to psychological disorders based in emotional mismanagement, such as jealousy or envy of others; possessing OCD mannerisms;
sickness: cancer;
femme fetale: whether she be a Black arts expert out to poison her spouse; or a sexy school girl with the power to ensure schoolboys, fathers and adult men alike;
love: the stability and assurance, and curative quality of woman’s love for man; self-sacrifice on the woman’s end;
growth: retrospection, introspection, and taking actions geared towards change. How many women must do this to deal with unfulfilled passions and desires, mental distortions and disorders, and learning resilience;
resistance: whether it be through authorial intervention- of Simms employing magical realism to erase a family from a heroine’s life so as to gift her with freedom, or a daughter visioning her mother poison her father as witches do their victims (again for freedom), or a mother defending her child against institutionalized racism using sarcasm and wit.
---
With all these cumulative treats: varying experiences, personalities, voices, POVs, styles and conclusions, I found myself trying to imagine how particular stories would unravel beyond the final words on pages. I found myself trying to make connections between characters that showed up in different stories. I found different parts of myself in the different women, and different situations, and their feelings. My mind was ever occupied as I raced to the finish line of each tale, and at the starting point of the next.
Short, spicy, saucy, thought-provoking, enlightening are only a few words that come to mind as I write this. Meet Behind Mars is a treasure of less than 150 pages which you must read. Allow yourself the blessing of this journey!
Review by Rebel Women Lit Member Nardia Lipman
Meet Behind Mars is a well-crafted, well presented collection of eleven short stories that vary in length, style, voices, situations and personalities.
I had completed a novel less than a week before starting Meet Behind Mars, and whereas the previous novel felt drawn out and boring, frankly, with a main character I could not connect with or come to like in any way, I surely enjoyed the change of pace and style that this new book brought to my reading experience.
I had mentioned earlier that this book had variance upon its pages. This is the main reason for my loving it so. I found it genius that author, Renee Simms, provided:
Multiplicity of POVs
I’m talking about protagonist’s tales being revealed in 1st, 3rd and even 2nd person. It was a refreshing feeling each time I encountered a new heroine and a new story as I knew that I would get interesting tales, seen from different angles. I would marvel at how the choice of using varying POVs realistically illustrates how different persons have internal dialogues with themselves, and how persons differ in the way they process their environments around them. When I got to the tale in 2nd person, at one point, I felt myself falling into the pages, as my eyes ran over all the “you(s)” in lines and the protagonist kept telling me what I have done, or ought to do. It was a nice, amusing and surreal feeling to feel so involved in her story.
Multiplicity of Personalities and Voices
No one person is or speaks the same as the other. This collection stayed true to that fact. I mean, yea you have people (we see them all the time on Youtube, and TV shows and Sitcoms etc.) who can do voice impersonations and all, but in the end, that person is a fake! And so, as I was saying, each character in Meet Behind Mars has her own personality and voice, albeit some more pleasant to me than others (and so will be the case for you I suppose). On these pages I met women who were mothers, spouses, daughters, students, writers, lecturers, teachers, researchers, engineers, travellers, victims and survivors. These voices are sometimes simultaneously, and other times contrastingly: soft and unassertive, fearful and reserved, uncertain and fickle, sarcastic and humourous, aware and outspoken, hopeful and resilient.
Multiplicity of Style
Can you imagine my pleasant surprise when the opening story turns out to be magical realism, after self-reflexively typing the heroine’s own creative work within the tale as being exactly that? At this point I was already hooked. Like me, thereafter, you will be taken on a journey. You’ll fall into a world of magical realism; become a witness to episodic email recollections; be privy to the world view of a child; become someone’s puppet in a tale that forces you to do as the protagonist asks, foretells or directs; be a critical reader of a PhD proposal; and of course be an observer to tales told as traditional realism. There is absolutely no way for you to be bored; your minds will stretch as wide and as confidently as these tales do.
Variance in Tense Usage
In a space that forced me to interact with varying tenses across 132 pages, I’ve come to realize that I may have a personal favourite for the present tense. It became that as I was murmuring the words on the pages, I gave the story life. Well that’s how I felt about the heroine’s tale in “Dive”. I felt her unfiltered preoccupations and expressions, and she felt relatable and real; her experience important for me to know. Then of course, there are the stories in the usual presentation of past tense. Spoken in retrospect, we are privy to a woman’s reflective process. We learn and are enlightened as much as she is/was. Where she has suffered, we understand and/or feel her pain. And if she has matured, we feel her growth.
The most powerful thing I felt from these choices by Simms though was this: from the present tense to the past tense usage, it remains that the experiences of Black women have always been: challenging, frustrating, controversial, rewarding, inspiring, but ultimately relevant.
Multiplicity of Experiences
But experiences which ultimately any Black woman can, will, or has faced in her lifetime. Simms touches on an assortment of thematically relevant topics:
motherhood and marriage: the self-sacrifice of women, for the ultimate success of family and spouse and unfortunate stagnation of self;
mother-son relationships: mothers doing all to grow, educate, support and protect sons;
self-fulfillment: the desire but challenge to attain such; the issue of uncertainty of self being Black and being Female; the issue of voicelessness, whether it be in determining one’s own voice in the process of writing her story or in the actual dialogues she attempts to have with male bodies in her life;
identity crisis: the struggle (internal and external) re. the acceptance of one’s racial, artistic and or female self;
beauty dilemma: being too Black, and not possessing enough European type features; being too conservative and plain, and not sexy and secular enough; the balancing act between appearing modest but sexy, sexy but not raunchy or loose;
racial integration, whether it be from interracial coupling or biracial or multiracial environments of existing (school, work);
madness: being victim to psychological disorders based in emotional mismanagement, such as jealousy or envy of others; possessing OCD mannerisms;
sickness: cancer;
femme fetale: whether she be a Black arts expert out to poison her spouse; or a sexy school girl with the power to ensure schoolboys, fathers and adult men alike;
love: the stability and assurance, and curative quality of woman’s love for man; self-sacrifice on the woman’s end;
growth: retrospection, introspection, and taking actions geared towards change. How many women must do this to deal with unfulfilled passions and desires, mental distortions and disorders, and learning resilience;
resistance: whether it be through authorial intervention- of Simms employing magical realism to erase a family from a heroine’s life so as to gift her with freedom, or a daughter visioning her mother poison her father as witches do their victims (again for freedom), or a mother defending her child against institutionalized racism using sarcasm and wit.
---
With all these cumulative treats: varying experiences, personalities, voices, POVs, styles and conclusions, I found myself trying to imagine how particular stories would unravel beyond the final words on pages. I found myself trying to make connections between characters that showed up in different stories. I found different parts of myself in the different women, and different situations, and their feelings. My mind was ever occupied as I raced to the finish line of each tale, and at the starting point of the next.
Short, spicy, saucy, thought-provoking, enlightening are only a few words that come to mind as I write this. Meet Behind Mars is a treasure of less than 150 pages which you must read. Allow yourself the blessing of this journey!
Review by Rebel Women Lit Member Nardia Lipman
May 5, 2019
These stories are indeed quite short, but these characters have the weight of real people and their stories have lingered with me long after finishing it. I cannot wait for Simms's novel to come out - she is clearly a literary force.
May 4, 2019
The stories were increasingly better throughout the collection. Some were eccentric and strange, others powerful and emotional. It took me a while to get through, but the range of plot, setting, and characters requires time between stories. My favorites were “Meet Behind Mars,” “The Body when Buoyant,” and “Rebel Airplanes.”
June 16, 2018
Everyone, please read this. Renee Simms is a star. Speaking of stars if I could give this six I would. Absolutely stunning.
February 28, 2018
This is one of the best collections of short fiction I have read in a very long time. Simms is an exceptionally deft writer, gifted with an eye for the crucial details. The stories chiefly concern African American women but in ways that show just how much experience can differ from person to person. They feature a blend of more or less traditional story-telling techniques with contemporary ones, but Simms never seems to make a narrative move for its own sake but rather for a well considered purpose that serves the whole. She is fearless in taking on difficult subjects, but there is also more than little comedy and absurdity in the stories. The vision is original, fresh, and mature. Enthusiastically recommended.
October 8, 2018
This was such a pleasure! We need, NEED more stories like this, about Black people being superordinary. I loved the characterization of all the protagonists—no one sounded at all like the others, even the first person protagonists; I have no idea how people do that. And there was such a range of characters and locales! This was awesome!
May 18, 2022
3.5 stars
While I didn’t enjoy some of the early stories as much, the later ones were great. Some of the stories ended too abruptly for me and I wanted Simms to go further (mostly because I was enjoying them). Simms does a fantastic job of getting you to feel for her characters and she has knack for placing you in a setting like Detroit. I especially liked the title story.
While I didn’t enjoy some of the early stories as much, the later ones were great. Some of the stories ended too abruptly for me and I wanted Simms to go further (mostly because I was enjoying them). Simms does a fantastic job of getting you to feel for her characters and she has knack for placing you in a setting like Detroit. I especially liked the title story.
December 10, 2018
Simply amazing. Gripping. Provocative. Fun(ny). These stories are a MUST READ!!!
October 11, 2018
HER STORY: parallels and nuances of Black Female Experiences in Reene Simm’s Meet Behind Mars
Meet Behind Mars is a well-crafted, well presented collection of eleven short stories that vary in length, style, voices, situations and personalities.
I had completed a novel less than a week before starting Meet Behind Mars, and whereas the previous novel felt drawn out and boring, frankly, with a main character I could not connect with or come to like in any way, I surely enjoyed the change of pace and style that this new book brought to my reading experience.
I had mentioned earlier that this book had variance upon its pages. This is the main reason for my loving it so. I found it genius that author, Renee Simms, provided:
Multiplicity of POVs
I’m talking about protagonist’s tales being revealed in 1st, 3rd and even 2nd person. It was a refreshing feeling each time I encountered a new heroine and a new story as I knew that I would get interesting tales, seen from different angles. I would marvel at how the choice of using varying POVs realistically illustrates how different persons have internal dialogues with themselves, and how persons differ in the way they process their environments around them. When I got to the tale in 2nd person, at one point, I felt myself falling into the pages, as my eyes ran over all the “you(s)” in lines and the protagonist kept telling me what I have done, or ought to do. It was a nice, amusing and surreal feeling to feel so involved in her story.
Multiplicity of Personalities and Voices
No one person is or speaks the same as the other. This collection stayed true to that fact. I mean, yea you have people (we see them all the time on Youtube, and TV shows and Sitcoms etc.) who can do voice impersonations and all, but in the end, that person is a fake! And so, as I was saying, each character in Meet Behind Mars has her own personality and voice, albeit some more pleasant to me than others (and so will be the case for you I suppose). On these pages I met women who were mothers, spouses, daughters, students, writers, lecturers, teachers, researchers, engineers, travellers, victims and survivors. These voices are sometimes simultaneously, and other times contrastingly: soft and unassertive, fearful and reserved, uncertain and fickle, sarcastic and humourous, aware and outspoken, hopeful and resilient.
Multiplicity of Style
Can you imagine my pleasant surprise when the opening story turns out to be magical realism, after self-reflexively typing the heroine’s own creative work within the tale as being exactly that? At this point I was already hooked. Like me, thereafter, you will be taken on a journey. You’ll fall into a world of magical realism; become a witness to episodic email recollections; be privy to the world view of a child; become someone’s puppet in a tale that forces you to do as the protagonist asks, foretells or directs; be a critical reader of a PhD proposal; and of course be an observer to tales told as traditional realism. There is absolutely no way for you to be bored; your minds will stretch as wide and as confidently as these tales do.
Variance in Tense Usage
In a space that forced me to interact with varying tenses across 132 pages, I’ve come to realize that I may have a personal favourite for the present tense. It became that as I was murmuring the words on the pages, I gave the story life. Well that’s how I felt about the heroine’s tale in “Dive”. I felt her unfiltered preoccupations and expressions, and she felt relatable and real; her experience important for me to know. Then of course, there are the stories in the usual presentation of past tense. Spoken in retrospect, we are privy to a woman’s reflective process. We learn and are enlightened as much as she is/was. Where she has suffered, we understand and/or feel her pain. And if she has matured, we feel her growth.
The most powerful thing I felt from these choices by Simms though was this: from the present tense to the past tense usage, it remains that the experiences of Black women have always been: challenging, frustrating, controversial, rewarding, inspiring, but ultimately relevant.
Multiplicity of Experiences
But experiences which ultimately any Black woman can, will, or has faced in her lifetime. Simms touches on an assortment of thematically relevant topics:
motherhood and marriage: the self-sacrifice of women, for the ultimate success of family and spouse and unfortunate stagnation of self;
mother-son relationships: mothers doing all to grow, educate, support and protect sons;
self-fulfillment: the desire but challenge to attain such; the issue of uncertainty of self being Black and being Female; the issue of voicelessness, whether it be in determining one’s own voice in the process of writing her story or in the actual dialogues she attempts to have with male bodies in her life;
identity crisis: the struggle (internal and external) re. the acceptance of one’s racial, artistic and or female self;
beauty dilemma: being too Black, and not possessing enough European type features; being too conservative and plain, and not sexy and secular enough; the balancing act between appearing modest but sexy, sexy but not raunchy or loose;
racial integration, whether it be from interracial coupling or biracial or multiracial environments of existing (school, work);
madness: being victim to psychological disorders based in emotional mismanagement, such as jealousy or envy of others; possessing OCD mannerisms;
sickness: cancer;
femme fetale: whether she be a Black arts expert out to poison her spouse; or a sexy school girl with the power to ensure schoolboys, fathers and adult men alike;
love: the stability and assurance, and curative quality of woman’s love for man; self-sacrifice on the woman’s end;
growth: retrospection, introspection, and taking actions geared towards change. How many women must do this to deal with unfulfilled passions and desires, mental distortions and disorders, and learning resilience;
resistance: whether it be through authorial intervention- of Simms employing magical realism to erase a family from a heroine’s life so as to gift her with freedom, or a daughter visioning her mother poison her father as witches do their victims (again for freedom), or a mother defending her child against institutionalized racism using sarcasm and wit.
---
With all these cumulative treats: varying experiences, personalities, voices, POVs, styles and conclusions, I found myself trying to imagine how particular stories would unravel beyond the final words on pages. I found myself trying to make connections between characters that showed up in different stories. I found different parts of myself in the different women, and different situations, and their feelings. My mind was ever occupied as I raced to the finish line of each tale, and at the starting point of the next.
Short, spicy, saucy, thought-provoking, enlightening are only a few words that come to mind as I write this. Meet Behind Mars is a treasure of less than 150 pages which you must read. Allow yourself the blessing of this journey!
Meet Behind Mars is a well-crafted, well presented collection of eleven short stories that vary in length, style, voices, situations and personalities.
I had completed a novel less than a week before starting Meet Behind Mars, and whereas the previous novel felt drawn out and boring, frankly, with a main character I could not connect with or come to like in any way, I surely enjoyed the change of pace and style that this new book brought to my reading experience.
I had mentioned earlier that this book had variance upon its pages. This is the main reason for my loving it so. I found it genius that author, Renee Simms, provided:
Multiplicity of POVs
I’m talking about protagonist’s tales being revealed in 1st, 3rd and even 2nd person. It was a refreshing feeling each time I encountered a new heroine and a new story as I knew that I would get interesting tales, seen from different angles. I would marvel at how the choice of using varying POVs realistically illustrates how different persons have internal dialogues with themselves, and how persons differ in the way they process their environments around them. When I got to the tale in 2nd person, at one point, I felt myself falling into the pages, as my eyes ran over all the “you(s)” in lines and the protagonist kept telling me what I have done, or ought to do. It was a nice, amusing and surreal feeling to feel so involved in her story.
Multiplicity of Personalities and Voices
No one person is or speaks the same as the other. This collection stayed true to that fact. I mean, yea you have people (we see them all the time on Youtube, and TV shows and Sitcoms etc.) who can do voice impersonations and all, but in the end, that person is a fake! And so, as I was saying, each character in Meet Behind Mars has her own personality and voice, albeit some more pleasant to me than others (and so will be the case for you I suppose). On these pages I met women who were mothers, spouses, daughters, students, writers, lecturers, teachers, researchers, engineers, travellers, victims and survivors. These voices are sometimes simultaneously, and other times contrastingly: soft and unassertive, fearful and reserved, uncertain and fickle, sarcastic and humourous, aware and outspoken, hopeful and resilient.
Multiplicity of Style
Can you imagine my pleasant surprise when the opening story turns out to be magical realism, after self-reflexively typing the heroine’s own creative work within the tale as being exactly that? At this point I was already hooked. Like me, thereafter, you will be taken on a journey. You’ll fall into a world of magical realism; become a witness to episodic email recollections; be privy to the world view of a child; become someone’s puppet in a tale that forces you to do as the protagonist asks, foretells or directs; be a critical reader of a PhD proposal; and of course be an observer to tales told as traditional realism. There is absolutely no way for you to be bored; your minds will stretch as wide and as confidently as these tales do.
Variance in Tense Usage
In a space that forced me to interact with varying tenses across 132 pages, I’ve come to realize that I may have a personal favourite for the present tense. It became that as I was murmuring the words on the pages, I gave the story life. Well that’s how I felt about the heroine’s tale in “Dive”. I felt her unfiltered preoccupations and expressions, and she felt relatable and real; her experience important for me to know. Then of course, there are the stories in the usual presentation of past tense. Spoken in retrospect, we are privy to a woman’s reflective process. We learn and are enlightened as much as she is/was. Where she has suffered, we understand and/or feel her pain. And if she has matured, we feel her growth.
The most powerful thing I felt from these choices by Simms though was this: from the present tense to the past tense usage, it remains that the experiences of Black women have always been: challenging, frustrating, controversial, rewarding, inspiring, but ultimately relevant.
Multiplicity of Experiences
But experiences which ultimately any Black woman can, will, or has faced in her lifetime. Simms touches on an assortment of thematically relevant topics:
motherhood and marriage: the self-sacrifice of women, for the ultimate success of family and spouse and unfortunate stagnation of self;
mother-son relationships: mothers doing all to grow, educate, support and protect sons;
self-fulfillment: the desire but challenge to attain such; the issue of uncertainty of self being Black and being Female; the issue of voicelessness, whether it be in determining one’s own voice in the process of writing her story or in the actual dialogues she attempts to have with male bodies in her life;
identity crisis: the struggle (internal and external) re. the acceptance of one’s racial, artistic and or female self;
beauty dilemma: being too Black, and not possessing enough European type features; being too conservative and plain, and not sexy and secular enough; the balancing act between appearing modest but sexy, sexy but not raunchy or loose;
racial integration, whether it be from interracial coupling or biracial or multiracial environments of existing (school, work);
madness: being victim to psychological disorders based in emotional mismanagement, such as jealousy or envy of others; possessing OCD mannerisms;
sickness: cancer;
femme fetale: whether she be a Black arts expert out to poison her spouse; or a sexy school girl with the power to ensure schoolboys, fathers and adult men alike;
love: the stability and assurance, and curative quality of woman’s love for man; self-sacrifice on the woman’s end;
growth: retrospection, introspection, and taking actions geared towards change. How many women must do this to deal with unfulfilled passions and desires, mental distortions and disorders, and learning resilience;
resistance: whether it be through authorial intervention- of Simms employing magical realism to erase a family from a heroine’s life so as to gift her with freedom, or a daughter visioning her mother poison her father as witches do their victims (again for freedom), or a mother defending her child against institutionalized racism using sarcasm and wit.
---
With all these cumulative treats: varying experiences, personalities, voices, POVs, styles and conclusions, I found myself trying to imagine how particular stories would unravel beyond the final words on pages. I found myself trying to make connections between characters that showed up in different stories. I found different parts of myself in the different women, and different situations, and their feelings. My mind was ever occupied as I raced to the finish line of each tale, and at the starting point of the next.
Short, spicy, saucy, thought-provoking, enlightening are only a few words that come to mind as I write this. Meet Behind Mars is a treasure of less than 150 pages which you must read. Allow yourself the blessing of this journey!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 21, 2019
i wanted to love this collection. there were stories i wasn't really into, but the ones i was into ("the body when buoyant," "you can kiss all that bye-bye," "rebel airplanes," "meet behind mars") i LOOOVED. also one of the best covers i've seen in a long time. another one of those i'll have to re-read to see how my opinion changes in time.
June 6, 2019
I have never read a better collection of short stories. It was over much too soon. Read it and you will fall in love with the fabulous Ms. Renee Simms. I was thrilled by her stories. I cannot wait for the next book from this master storyteller. I rarely give a book a 5-star rating but I'd give her a 10 if I could!
April 24, 2020
What an introspective and insightful collection of short stories! Each protagonist uncovered something about themselves and the world around them, and so does the reader. My favorite stories, "Who Do You Love?" and "Meet Behind Mars," are especially thought-provoking. I highly recommend this collection!
January 3, 2024
3.5 ⭐️
A bit of a mixed bag, as I find a lot of short story collections. The writing itself was strong, and a lot of the characters were strong, especially considering they are short stories. These are definitely stories to sit with and look back on a few times to really see all the pieces of. I would be very interested in seeing a full novel by this author.
A bit of a mixed bag, as I find a lot of short story collections. The writing itself was strong, and a lot of the characters were strong, especially considering they are short stories. These are definitely stories to sit with and look back on a few times to really see all the pieces of. I would be very interested in seeing a full novel by this author.
February 1, 2021
I really enjoyed these stories but found they mostly ended too soon to provide any sense of direction or satisfaction. The title story is amazing, and I know just the unit where I can teach it. But on the whole, a bit underwhelming.
September 26, 2018
I enjoyed these stories so much, but four stars because so many of them felt sort of unfinished to me, like they just abruptly ended.
January 19, 2019
“The Body When Buoyant” will stay with me for a long time. A gorgeous collection of stories. Can’t wait to read more from this author.
December 30, 2019
These stories are sharp and brilliant, diamonds in the atmosphere. Laugh out loud funny, at times, and always full of gravity.
July 21, 2022
Excellent short-story collection. Subtle, insightful, true. I would agree that the giant mustard penis is the best entry, but capping off a collection that needs to be read first.
October 14, 2023
Interesting, well written short stories. Certainly an author I would hope to read more from.
March 25, 2024
An eclectic mix of evocative realism and insightful metafiction that will appeal to fans of Carmen Machado and Nafissa Thompson-Spires.
June 21, 2025
DNF I'm not a fan of short stories but this one sounded promising. Unfortunately, the stories left me hanging too often, so I only read a few.
July 23, 2018
My only compliment is that there weren’t more stories! I want more. Loved them.
April 28, 2020
Interesting short story collection. Compelling narration. Quirky, in a good way. Quick read, clean cut and to the point.
Read
December 8, 2023This is a very good story collection that came out in 2018, but it’s from a relatively small university press. The reviews for it are also lauding. The cover lead me to believe it would be another “weird” book like I enjoyed with variable levels from the collections “Heads of Colored People” and “Friday Black”; the title also contributed to this feeling.
But it’s not. It’s a really mature collection of stories with a few moments of humor, but almost no strong moments of irony or tongue-in-cheek wryness. It’s simply about mostly generally well-educated Black adults dealing with adult circumstances. And so each of the stories are built more or less along these lines. But there’s some interesting in form such as making one story almost entirely through emails, another deals with planning a 30 year reunion and has some back and forth of a committee meeting.
There’s no playing in this collection though. It’s a debut work, but it’s also the work of someone who isn’t wasting anybody’s time with stories that aren’t deeply considered, thoughtful, polished, complete, and worth your time. It’s the first story collection I’ve read in a long time that I read over the course of a week, rather than over the course of a day or two because I wanted to slow up a little as I read. It’s the exact opposite of some recent story collections I’ve read that were in a rush to capitalize on way to a novel or because of viral fame. I would absolutely read a Renee Simms novel were she to write one, but these stories feel full-circle enough for me.
And then I got to the last story, and began to think about whether or not this is a 4 or 5 star review. The title story of this collection is simply put one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. It’s collected mostly through a series of emails among a mother of a Black son going to a predominately white school, a teacher who never responds to her emails, and the head of the school. It’s funny and touching, it’s pained because she’s trying to be patient, and it’s honest and revealing. I am a teacher and I don’t quite teach at a school like this one, but there’s enough of it in my school to see her here. It’s also a very nice palate cleanser from the awfulness of kids in the national media right now.
But it’s not. It’s a really mature collection of stories with a few moments of humor, but almost no strong moments of irony or tongue-in-cheek wryness. It’s simply about mostly generally well-educated Black adults dealing with adult circumstances. And so each of the stories are built more or less along these lines. But there’s some interesting in form such as making one story almost entirely through emails, another deals with planning a 30 year reunion and has some back and forth of a committee meeting.
There’s no playing in this collection though. It’s a debut work, but it’s also the work of someone who isn’t wasting anybody’s time with stories that aren’t deeply considered, thoughtful, polished, complete, and worth your time. It’s the first story collection I’ve read in a long time that I read over the course of a week, rather than over the course of a day or two because I wanted to slow up a little as I read. It’s the exact opposite of some recent story collections I’ve read that were in a rush to capitalize on way to a novel or because of viral fame. I would absolutely read a Renee Simms novel were she to write one, but these stories feel full-circle enough for me.
And then I got to the last story, and began to think about whether or not this is a 4 or 5 star review. The title story of this collection is simply put one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. It’s collected mostly through a series of emails among a mother of a Black son going to a predominately white school, a teacher who never responds to her emails, and the head of the school. It’s funny and touching, it’s pained because she’s trying to be patient, and it’s honest and revealing. I am a teacher and I don’t quite teach at a school like this one, but there’s enough of it in my school to see her here. It’s also a very nice palate cleanser from the awfulness of kids in the national media right now.
December 20, 2018
every one of these stories was enjoyable! I tend to get bored with short story collections because the characters are all too similar or only a couple of the stories are good, but each of these stories had unique characters, settings, etc. Also very fast to read!
September 16, 2018
Lovely collection of stories
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