Whatever Happened to Interracial Love

“Collins’ stories are passionate and light-footed, angry but also delicate—they move like quicksilver, conjuring up character, theme and situation in a couple of pages. She edits precisely—like the film maker she was—and she’s deliciously funny. She speaks of the many-sided lives of black women with care and intelligence. I adored this book.”—Zadie Smith“Sexy and radical and intimate.”—Miranda July

Exuberant, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, these sixteen stories by Kathleen Collins explore deep, far-reaching issues—relating to race, gender, family, and sexuality—that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. Collins’s work masterfully blends the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, seamlessly integrating the African American experience into her characters’ lives and creating rich and devastatingly familiar characters who transcend symbolism.In “The Uncle,” a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In “Only Once,” a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate—and final—act of foolishness. And in the title story, a recent college graduate realizes the limits of the civil rights movement—and the pesonal and romantic consequences it holds for her.Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? is a major and long-overdue addition to our literary canon.

About the Author

Kathleen Collins was a pioneer African American playwright, filmmaker, civil rights activist, film editor, and educator. Her film Losing Ground is one of the first features made by a black woman in America, and is an extremely rare narrative portrayal of a black female intellectual. She died in 1988 at the age of forty-six.Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry and a Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies at Yale University. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2005, and in 2010 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry by the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.