Janelle Bassett’s debut story collection, Thanks for This Riot (University of Nebraska Press, September 2024), opens with a teenage girl visiting an arcade. Angry with her mother’s efforts to protect and control her, embarrassed about having less money than her friends, the girl tries go-kart racing, letting her feelings take over as she prepares to speed off course. “I simply gave myself full permission,” the girl says. Her rebellion is the first of many in Bassett’s funny and arch book, which features characters, mostly women—caretakers, counselors, retail workers, mothers, grandmothers—trying to resist the strictures of their lives. The stories, which contain many scenes of social awkwardness and misunderstanding, are comic and poignant. By the end of the book, when a character whose literalness has baffled those around her declares, “Life…
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Poets & Writers (Digital) - 1 Issue, September/October 2024