★ 11/15/2018
Prior to her death in 1988 at age 46, Collins was best known for Losing Ground (1982), one of the first American feature films produced by an African American woman. Her renown grew with the excellent posthumously published short story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love . Now Collins's groundbreaking work as a writer, filmmaker, activist, and educator is rapidly being recognized. This collected volume of fiction, plays, and autobiographical material, edited by Collins's daughter Lorez Collins, adds to the author's evolving reputation. Of particular interest are the short story "Nina Simone," in which two narrators discuss their own troubled relationship through the lens of the famous singer; searing commentary on race and gender in the diaries; a potent excerpt from the unfinished novel Lollie: A Suburban Tale ; and the Losing Ground screenplay (including copious directorial notes by the author). VERDICT While not as eye-opening as Collins's earlier stories, this compilation will add appreciation for a talented writer whose life was cut too short as well as provide hope for the recovery of her previously unpublished work. Recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, 8/20/18.]—L.J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn
Though the oeuvre hails from the '70s and '80s, nothing feels dated. Readers will discover Collins is as she characterized herself: "I live way ahead of myself in some ways, seeing things long before it is their time to come into being."
The New York Times Book Review - Camille Acker
For those under Collins's spell, our plaint will always be the same: more . Give us more—more letters, more diary entries, more careful curation of the work. What we really want for her is more life. And more art, because what we have—even when raw, unfinished…is dazzling…She is often compared to Grace Paley, lazily, I think…The two do overlap politically and share a certain generosity to their characters, but no one sounds like Collins…Her voice and vision are idiosyncratic and pitiless, combining mischief and crisp authority, formal experimentation and deep feeling…There is the sleekness of her sentences, and the burrs. There is cool skepticism but also hunger for rapture. There is humor a knife's edge from despair…In the stories collected in Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?, we encountered Collins the sharp, skillful satirist, especially where respectability politics were concerned. In Notes From a Black Woman's Diary, we see her imagination spill more freely—in quick character sketches and case studies in tension…
The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
A sweeping picture of a mega-talent who was overlooked during her lifetime.” — Vanity Fair
“Dazzling…. [Collins’] voice and vision are idiosyncratic and pitiless, combining mischief and crisp authority, formal experimentation and deep feeling…. There is cool skepticism but also hunger for rapture. There is humor a knife’s edge from despair…. [A] stylish, morally disheveling work.” — New York Times
“Collins proves her literary power across mediums — exploring the complexities of marriage, motherhood and identity — even 30 years after her death.” — Time
“[Kathleen Collins] and her work have been granted new and necessary examination.... ‘Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary’ further celebrates her fertile mind through her fiction (both finished and not), plays and personal reflections. Collins sought the complexity of interiors, of both our homes and ourselves.” — New York Times Book Review
“[Collins’] work not only addresses the everyday struggles of black men and women in the US, it also testifies to a vibrant inner life.” — Frieze
“[Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary ] adds to the author’s evolving reputation.... Searing commentary on race and gender.... This compilation will add appreciation for a talented writer whose life was cut too short.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Collins limns incisive portraits of artistic, intellectual black women stretched to their limits that glimmer against a background of racism, sexism, and just plain life. A timely reclamation of a remarkable voice.” — Booklist
A sweeping picture of a mega-talent who was overlooked during her lifetime.
Dazzling…. [Collins’] voice and vision are idiosyncratic and pitiless, combining mischief and crisp authority, formal experimentation and deep feeling…. There is cool skepticism but also hunger for rapture. There is humor a knife’s edge from despair…. [A] stylish, morally disheveling work.
[Kathleen Collins] and her work have been granted new and necessary examination.... ‘Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary’ further celebrates her fertile mind through her fiction (both finished and not), plays and personal reflections. Collins sought the complexity of interiors, of both our homes and ourselves.
New York Times Book Review
Collins proves her literary power across mediums — exploring the complexities of marriage, motherhood and identity — even 30 years after her death.
Collins limns incisive portraits of artistic, intellectual black women stretched to their limits that glimmer against a background of racism, sexism, and just plain life. A timely reclamation of a remarkable voice.
[Collins’] work not only addresses the everyday struggles of black men and women in the US, it also testifies to a vibrant inner life.
Collins limns incisive portraits of artistic, intellectual black women stretched to their limits that glimmer against a background of racism, sexism, and just plain life. A timely reclamation of a remarkable voice.
Collins proves her literary power across mediums — exploring the complexities of marriage, motherhood and identity — even 30 years after her death.
NOTES is a thought-provoking audiobook best consumed slowly, leaving time for reflection on editor Nina Collins’s reason for including each piece in the collection before taking in another installment. Collins, the author’s daughter, says her intent is to show her mother’s literary range. Each narrator provides a new experience for each literary offering, whether it’s prose, an incomplete screenplay, or a letter. The well-known narrators give gravitas to the disquieting truths about a black woman’s interior life. The most fascinating part of this work is the narrators’ care with the plays and screenplays. Each narrator follows the author’s stage directions, lending sorrow, surprise, haughtiness, and fear to the various characters. This is a work that will be listened to—even if only in parts—time and again. M.P.P. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
NOTES is a thought-provoking audiobook best consumed slowly, leaving time for reflection on editor Nina Collins’s reason for including each piece in the collection before taking in another installment. Collins, the author’s daughter, says her intent is to show her mother’s literary range. Each narrator provides a new experience for each literary offering, whether it’s prose, an incomplete screenplay, or a letter. The well-known narrators give gravitas to the disquieting truths about a black woman’s interior life. The most fascinating part of this work is the narrators’ care with the plays and screenplays. Each narrator follows the author’s stage directions, lending sorrow, surprise, haughtiness, and fear to the various characters. This is a work that will be listened to—even if only in parts—time and again. M.P.P. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
★ 2018-12-11
A multigenre collection of Collins' (Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? , 2016) previously unpublished writing—fiction, letters, diary entries, plays, and screenplays—collected here and edited by her daughter, 30 years after the author's death.
"The greatest marvel of Collins's writing is that she is a magician in her use of interiority," writes Danielle Evans (Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self , 2010) in the collection's introduction. "She can just slip underneath a moment of tension barely noticed by those in the world of the story and give us a character's entire interior life, but she is also a master of the moments when…all pretense drops away and the unsayable is given words and said out loud." It is, as the works here quickly demonstrate, a mastery that transcends form. The book opens with a trio of short stories, each of them centered around a woman as she is observed, followed by an excerpt from an unfinished novel, Lollie: A Suburban Tale , in which a bohemian husband and wife fight for narrative control of their marriage. It's a fight that ends prematurely; the immediate tragedy is the excerpt cuts off. The fragments from Collins' actual life—first the diary entries and then the letters—are as arrestingly clear as the fiction, small and expansive at once. Dated Sept. 9: "They're selling an old medieval house on Mason's Road, where the rooms go on endlessly, like a labyrinth. We went there on Saturday and bought five red chairs for the kitchen." And reflecting on life on an April 11: "Instead of dealing with race I went in search of love…and what I found was a very hungry colored lady." The bulk of the work here, though, are the scripts, one for her 1982 feature film, Losing Ground— a "comedy drama" about a philosophy professor who finds herself starring in a student film that hews unsettlingly close to her real life—and one for the stage play The Brothers , the story of a striving middle-class black family, told by its grieving women.
Reading Collins work the same themes over again and again across mediums is a rare pleasure—as close as most of us will ever come to her spectacular mind.
