Don't Erase Me(1997) by Carolyn Ferrell

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Don't Erase Me (1997) 

by Carolyn Ferrell

South Bronx, New York

New York: 39/105

The Bronx: 7/7

   Don't Erase Me, a harrowing collection of short-stories about materially disadvantaged young women growing up in the South Bronx in the early 1990's, closes out the Bronx sub-chapter of editor Susan Straight's 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list. Ferrell published this collection back in 1997- one of the stories ended up making it into more than one anthology and Ferrell landed a job teaching at Sarah Larwrence.  She didn't publish another book until July of 2021 when Dear Ms. Metropolitan came out- a grim tale about three young women who are kidnapped, tortured and raped for a decade by a neighbor.   Don't Erase Me isn't quite that grim- although several of the included short stories- all about young minority women living in the South Bronx (except for one that takes place in Orange County for some reason), recall multiple tropes that I remember from 90's newspapers.  In one story, eighth graders compete to be "school wives"- i.e. get pregnant and married in the eighth grade.  In another, a single mother of three struggles with her HIV diagnosis, which she apparently contracted from her step-father.  In a third, a gay African American student is murdered by classmates. 

  Also worth mentioning that Don't Erase Me is not a novel, it's a collection of short stories.  I think this is the first short story collection on the list and it's hard to see why this would be the one book to pick in a project putatively dedicated to the novel.

  It is all pretty dark stuff, and frankly, every novel in this sub-chapter was pretty dark.  Not to tip my forthcoming summary post, but How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent by Julia Alvarez, which was recently named to Atlantic Magazine's Top 150 American Novels list, looks like the class of the bunch.  Charming Billy is also up there because it's a prize winner, but the rest, yikes.  Not fun. None of these books were fun and a couple were positively excruciating.