Cutting Edge
Noir with a feminist perspective
This is more than the crime of murder; noir can retain its mystery without murder. This is more than revenge; noir doesn't have to be about an alpha male swooping in to avenge a victimized or dead female. This is not noir with a feminine style; it's noir with a feminist perspective. This is a collection of stories about the female body in three parts. This is Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers.
Bernice L. McFadden's OBF, Inc.
It's a question of what do you love more. You're always going to trade what you love less for what you love more. Though McFadden makes Andrew run away from the OBF, Inc. (a company that takes from racists to pay for the targets of racism), I had an inkling he was going to accept the work offer because he was willing to sell the car
he loved ... more than he’d ever loved any woman.
The incredible in the story (for example, can we have a society in which
the targets of racism can profit from it, if they are willing to sell their souls to be identified as the “one black friend” of racist clients)
become credible once one read in it the satiric and dystopian veins Joyce Carol Oates read in it.
S.A. Solomon's Impala
Certain words have no business in language. Think of cluster-fuck. Call it a dire situation and it would be the apt description of what Renée in S.A. Solomon's short story finds herself. But Renee
hated that expression, evoking as it did (and as it was meant to) a female body pinned down by male members.
In addition to telling the story of a rape survivor's battle to regain control of her life, Impala demands the excision of certain phrases from language given the insidiousness of their origins.
Edwidge Danticat's Please Translate
What is it like for an undocumented immigrant mother to worry about the fate of her son? Edwidge Danticat's Please Translate asks readers to piece together a story from the transcript of messages an undocumented migrant woman left an estranged partner holding their son hostage.