Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

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Whatever Happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins

Uncertainty and ambivalence, intensity and desire flicker and flash through Kathleen Collins’ short (and sometimes short short) stories. Her stories about marriage, love, the Civil Rights protest movements of the 60s, class, family life, and social expectations are told with such directness and immediacy that they escape the pitfall of coming across like commentary; instead, they feel more like someone whispering their unfiltered thoughts into your ear. Her characters’ longings—for beauty, for happiness, for equals in passion and intellect, to be seen as worthy but unexceptional by white society, and overall for a vibrant, free, and chosen life—come through as a strong ache, mediated by their doubts, insecurities, contradictions, diminishments, connections, defeats, and triumphs. Fascinating to read from the vantage point of 2019, when conversations around consent, race, gender, relationships, class, colorism and politics writ large look undeniably different than they did when the stories of Whatever Happened to Interracial Love were written in the 70s and 80s, Collins’ stories nevertheless feel anything but dated. Rather, they feel modern and direct, avoiding the contortions of trying to represent a political correct vision of the way things should be at the expense of showing the way things are.

Subjects this book contains which some readers may be sensitive to: death, racism.