31 Days of Stories 2025, Day 23: “Ogbuefi” by Vincent Anioke
The passage into manhood for Chibuike involves the shedding of innocent blood.
A Blog About Books and Reading
A Blog About Books and Reading
The passage into manhood for Chibuike involves the shedding of innocent blood.
"Fiction is a more subtle and sophisticated revenge porn."
Whittall manages a delicate balancing act: she addresses an incident of sexual assault without turning her story into a simple trauma narrative.
The critic Delbert Russell referred to the story as "a mordant criticism of the artificiality and emptiness of the life of the haute bourgeoisie of Quebec."
The story focuses on Anju, an overweight racialized high school student who is relentlessly bullied by a group of popular white girls.
The idea of progress, and what it displaces, takes on a surreal aspect in "Burial Ground."
Gasco has endowed her story with something that is terribly unfashionable in book club circles and social media feeds: an unlikable narrator.
The shifting ground of motivation and relationship between the two characters is brought out metaphorically in the mummers' costumes.
The speaker in the story is Azurée Ghiz, the descendent of Arab immigrants in Toronto.
Guérard's novel gives the impression that the author is impatient with traditional narrative forms.