Taylor’s Reviews > I'm a Fool to Want You: Stories > Status Update

House of Compassion also top story, but completely different style and vibes

“Listen, I respect the closet. For many of my friends, the closer was the only safe place they had.”

Afternoon Tea is my favorite story so far.

Style: short (6 pages!); great example of show not tell—dropped into and immediately immersed into the world; ends with reader wanting to know what comes next

Subjects: Sense of self, self-worth, racism, colorism, generational trauma, family, mentorship, woc experience, parables, reframing, pride, love

“… they get hurt so easily. Sometimes you just have to poke them for them to turn red as a tomato.”

Afternoon Tea

[granddaughter asks her grandmother why they’re brown]

“At the place where people are made they didn’t have enough paint to make us really dark. We were going to be black, but they ran out of paint in the color department. There are a lot of people like us in the world. We didn’t get so many coats. But they didn’t paint white people at all, or only gave them very thin coats, which is why…