You Are Free

Senna (Caucasia) continues her exploration of mixed-race America in this collection. In "There, There," the narrator is reworking her second novel, trying to find something redemptive in the work her editor called too dark and depressing. This pretty well defines Senna's task in these stories, looking for redemption in fairly bleak lives with varying degrees of success. All the stories are written in the first person and have mixed-race female narrators, many of whom struggle with mixed-race men. In "Admission," a successful young artistic couple visit an exclusive preschool as research for the play the wife is writing and then find themselves hounded by the admissions officer, who can't believe they've turned the school down. In the title story, a woman is contacted by another believing to be the daughter she gave up for adoption and wonders if it's possible the appendectomy she remembers from her childhood was actually something else.