Talking Story About Short Stories

This week I came across a tweet that asked what is the first short story that comes to your mind when you read this, and I thought instantly of O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” I actually didn’t reply with that answer because I felt it was too on the nose. Everyone knows that story and the infamous twist. I also felt a little embarrassed that it was literally the first short story that popped in my head. It was published in 1905 and it is one of the reasons I think O’Henry was considered one of the best short story writers of American fiction. That being said, I felt that the answer was a bit dated. I am so out of the loop when it comes to recent literary short fiction and you know social media…you don’t want to feel uncool or irrelevant.

Immediately after thinking about that I thought about my favorite Joyce short story “Araby.” I chose this to reply to the tweet. I know, I know…talk about being out of the loop. It was published in 1914 as part of Joyce’s Dubliners, so it’s not much older than “Magi,” but “Araby” was one of the first short stories where I recognized the epiphany moment. I still felt a little uncool but I decided it didn’t matter because “Araby” and Dubliners are influential to my current short story collection. I say current but literally I have been writing it for almost 15 years or so.

After I posted my reply, Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” zoomed through my thoughts. “Girl” has stuck with me after all of these years. Another author who greatly influences me, Kincaid’s exploration of growing up in the post-colonial Caribbean helped me to see how much colonization affected the way we viewed ourselves as women, what my culture and the culture of the colonizer created in restrictions, rules, and appropriate social behavior.

To be honest, the tweet really got me thinking about all the short stories I have read and all the ones I haven’t. There is so much amazing and awesome writing out there I feel like there isn’t enough time to get to them all.