'Heads Of The Colored People' Takes On The Pressures Of Being 'The Only One'
Nafissa Thompson-Spires' new story collection is full of characters coping with being not just black in a white world — but the only black person in their worlds. She says that's a hard role to fill.
America has had its first black baseball player, its first black astronaut, its first black president — but after the firsts, the world is still full of onlies. Sometimes the only-ness is existential — like the only black student in a private school. Sometimes it's incidental — the only black woman in an hour-long yoga class. It can be a hard role to fill, says author Nafissa Thompson-Spires, "because you are sort of a representative of what people see as black, by virtue of them not having had much
