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short stories

  • 'It’s a Cautionary Tale of What Happens if You Don’t Get Free': The Root Presents: It’s Lit! Talks The Secret Lives of Church Ladies With Deesha Philyaw
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    'It’s a Cautionary Tale of What Happens if You Don’t Get Free': The Root Presents: It’s Lit! Talks The Secret Lives of Church Ladies With Deesha Philyaw

    Amid a year with very few things to celebrate, one of its most celebrated books was Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. To date, the short story collection has been a 2020 National Book Award finalist, won the 2020 Story Prize, a 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize for first fiction, and the 2021…

    By

    Maiysha Kai

    Published

  • Birthday Boy
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    Birthday Boy

    Kuokoa B. Mchango was certain that it was the last night he would be alive, for you see, tomorrow was his 28th birthday. As he lay in his fold-out cot and stared at the low ceiling, he realized with a twinge of sadness that this fact didn’t bother him nearly as much as it used…

    By

    Yesha Callahan

    Published

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    Roses

    In the summer of 1998, shortly after my girlfriend Valerie moved out of our Brooklyn apartment, using the excuse that I was too depressing to live with, Mom called me from her Harlem brownstone, sniffling into the phone. “He’s gone, David,” she said, her voice cracking. “I knew as soon as they started cutting off…

    By

    Yesha Callahan

    Published

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    (What Did I Do to Get So) Black and Blue

    Janice limply heaves the thick unabridged dictionary into the metal trash can at the corner of Vandam and crosses the street. Leaving the Shine office with the large Webster’s in her arms is a pathetic act of payback, she knows. But Janice brought the book with her when she started and she would be damned…

    By

    Miles Marshall Lewis

    Published

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    Bloody Mae

    “Tell me, Jonah: What good is a nurse that faints at the sight of blood?” Obadiah, a frontier-weary doctor, whined as he inhaled his fifth glass of whiskey. “Oh, bless her heart,” Jonah chuckled, placing his two feet on the table before them. “It’s not funny. Just the other day, I asked her to wrap…

    By

    Clarkisha Kent

    Published

  • Fishbone
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    Fishbone

    I’m not going to kill myself. I yelled it out early this morning when my mother woke me up. “I AM NOT GOING TO FUCKING KILL MYSELF!” is exactly how I said it when she came busting into my room demanding that I get my clothes on to go to meet Jesus. Two days ago…

    By

    Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

    Published