Last night in my Read Like a Writer class we discussed “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, and No Apology” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires and an hour and a half was still not long enough to unpack it all. 1/ 
We talked about voice and metafiction and how signifiers, interpretations, and readers' assumptions about the story and the characters are the subject of the story itself. In this way it is "telling that shows," to borrow from Peter Rock. 2/
The omniscient third person narrator dips into the minds of multiple characters, allows us to see the differences in the ways characters see themselves and the ways they are misunderstand or not seen or erased by other characters, society because of their Blackness. 3/
We also talked about how what you don't show is just as important as what you do. Keeping the violence outside of the frame refocuses us on the characters and who they are rather than reducing them to victims. It also underlines how sadly familiar police shootings are. 4/
All of the characters are artists in some way and interested in representation in art, enriching the theme. Their internal conflict over their own art mirrors the story's own internal conflicts. It also shows us how violence both destroys and creates art. 5/
We really appreciated how the story explicitly creates space for itself and its characters, going against gatekeepers, readers, and anyone policing storytelling and aesthetics, showing us how the literary establishment is part of the same racist forces behind the shooting. 6/
Ultimately it was a call for all of us as writers to combat oppression and create space for ourselves and others where we can be the weird, strange, unconventional people we are and write the weird, strange, unconventional stories that only we can write. 7/
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