Notes from a black woman's diary: selected works of Kathleen Collins

A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2019 FROMVanity Fair * Vogue * The Huffington PostA stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts bythe brilliant African-American artist and filmmakerRelatively unknown during her life, the artist, filmmaker, and writer Kathleen Collins emerged on the literary scene in 2016 with the posthumous publication of the short story collectionWhatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Said Zadie Smith, To be this good and yet to be ignored is shameful, but her rediscovery is a great piece of luck for us.That rediscovery continues inNotes from a Black Womans Diary, which spans genres to reveal the breadth and depth of the late authors talent.

The compilation is anchored by more of Collinss short stories, which, striking and powerful in their brevity, reveal the ways in which relationships are both formed and come undone.

Also collected here is the work Collins wrote for the screen and stage: the screenplay of her filmLosing Ground,in which a professor discovers that the student film shes agreed to act in has uncomfortable parallels to her own life; and the script forThe Brothers,a play about the potent effects of sexism and racism on a midcentury middle-class black family. And finally, it is in Collinss raw and prescient diaries that her nascent ideas about race, gender, marriage, and motherhood first play out on the page.Kathleen Collinss writing brings to life vibrant characters whose quotidian concerns powerfully illuminate the particular joys, challenges, and heartbreaks rendered by the African-American experience.

By turns empowering, exuberant, sexy, and poignant,Notes from a Black Womans Diaryis a brilliant compendium of an inimitable talent, and a rich portrait of a writer hard at work.