Reading this book was not the best for me. Because short story collections are an art form that I appreciate, I thought this would be a collection I would have a good experience. I did not that a great experience. I don't think giving a star rating would not be appropriate for me to do. Because I am required to add a star rating to complete this feedback form, I am going to select three stars.

These stories are hardhitting and get at the heart of what ails a society that treats a group of people as less than. Oliver really used an intimate hand to guide these stories to her readers. You will not emerge from this experience unchanged. They are visceral, tender, heartfelt, and brutal.

a beautiful collection of stories! diane oliver's voice is such a distinctive and important one and i'm really glad that these works are being published posthumously. they paint a vivid and honest picture of black families’ lives in mid-century america and are very much rooted in their time, yet have a timeless feel through their highly nuanced depiction of race, but also domestic life more generally.
the audiobook was very well narrated and really brought the characters to life.

I listened to the audiobook while reading the ARC; the narration was gorgeous! I loved this and helped me get through the book, especially the stories I found a little harder to get into.

Most of the time while reading a collection of short stories I have one of two standouts, but it's hard for me to pick from Neighbors when so many of them were so well done. I know Oliver would have been a leading name in literature if she hadn't passed so young, and I'm grateful we are able to appreciate her works today.

Thank you Netgalley for providing a digital ARC.

I am very grateful that these stories are finally being shared - even though Diane Oliver has been gone for a long time. While the stories that she wrote were of her time, they're also timely and relevant in today's discourse as well. This collection runs the gamut across a number of different social and racial elements of society and give voice to haunting and poignant characters.

The narrator is excellent - she really brought these stories to life and did them great justice. The pacing and tone was great and provided a fantastic listening experience. I really appreciated the foreword in this book - hearing what the stories meant to the narrator really added an additional layer and helped to deconstruct some of the underlying themes. These stories are not meant to be read through quickly, but deserve to be digested and enjoyed at a slower pace. There is layered nuance that can be overlooked at first pass.

Diane Oliver definitely deserves a place in the literary canon and should be mentioned along with other great writers of her time. The glimpses of a not-so-distant past are thought provoking and incredibly important. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ALC of this book to listen to. I definitely enjoyed hearing these stories narrated.

I listened to this book a few months ago and it has stayed with me. It was beautifully written short story collection of the Black experience in the 1950s. The narrator did a fantastic job bringing to reality the many emotions of the characters in this novel.

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver is a poignant look at life during Jim Crow and the vibrations ad affects of its intrusion. There is no way to review this book but to say, read it! It should be required reading. The writing is phenomenal and the stories are both spectacular and impossibly rich with heart-wrenching imagery, history and culture. My heart is still pounding after reading it. I'm blessed to have found Oliver's work post humorously. I also loved Tayari Jones introduction and have already purchased a hard cover. I am forever changed.

Short story collections are chronically underrated, and this collection is no exception. The author, Diane Oliver died in an accident in 1966 at age 22 and the world lost the opportunity to read more of her work. This collection was compiled and released nearly 60 years after her death. The masterfully narrated stories in this collection are understated, impactful, and painfully timely. Two of my personal favorites were “Mint Juleps not Served Here”, “Health Service” and “Frozen Voices” but many others also left a mark. Though Oliver’s stories were written during the Civil Rights Movement and early integration, many of their themes and descriptions are unfortunately still relevant today and hit home as a professional who works in health and human services.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for this ALC!

✨ Review ✨ Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver; Narrated by: Emana Rachelle

Thanks to Dreamscape Media and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

Diane Oliver, who died tragically at 22 in 1966, had published several short stories but didn't really find much acclaim as a writer during her lifetime. This collection seeks to bring together Oliver's stories and to introduce her into the Black literary canon. The majority of the stories center the stories of Black women (most probably in their teens through their 30s or 40s) during the Civil Rights Movement during which Oliver came of age.

Some of the stories didn't necessarily connect with me but some were absolutely incredible.

The first story, "Neighbors," is set the night before a family is set to send their first grader to a white school to cross the barrier of segregated schools. As they face threats and violence and fear, they wonder -- is it worth it to be the first? what are their responsibilities as this young boy's family to keep him safe vs. furthering racial progress?

Other stories feature teens and young 20s Black women as they seek to go off to a white college and to integrate a lunch counter. Another goes with her family on a bus across the country to find their dad. Many of the younger women have child care and work duties also to contribute to their families.

Several stories consider slightly older women with children -- seeking to get medical care, juggle familial responsibilities, or even to care for white families as domestic workers. Themes of race and place, class and economics, family obligations, and love and responsibility appear throughout.

I enjoyed the audio narration though sometimes for me it's hard to transition between short stories in audio as you switch characters and settings and stories. I skipped a couple of stories that I just couldn't get into because of this.

In the end, I was convinced at the power of Oliver's writing and that she should be considered one of the great Black female writers of the 1960s. I wish we could have seen what she could have done with more time!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: historical and literary fiction
Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
Pub Date: 13 Feb 2024

I love short stories so I was intrigued to read Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Emana Rachelle did a good job. I liked how the first story focused on family life. These stories are centred around the Black American experience and explore racism, segregation, and the responsibilities of having kids and having no money. It’s sad to learn the author passed away at age 22 but these stories leave a lasting impression of her experiences in America during the 50s and 60s. There’s a nice introduction by Tayari Jones. I’m glad I read these stories!

Neighbors and Other Stories is an excellent collection of short stories written by the late Diane Oliver depicting the lives of Black people in the 1950s and 1960s. None of the stories give you the warm fuzzies, but they do provide a stark and realistic look at how racism played a massive part in hindering the growth of an entire race of people. Ms. Oliver's writing kept me engrossed in the lives of each of the characters. Most of the stories were quite entertaining, and the audiobook narrator did a fantastic job bringing the characters to life.

I really enjoyed this set of short stories about mid-century American life under Jim Crow.

This is really beautifully written, surreal at times, often experimental. It's a complete tragedy that we lost Oliver at such young age.

But I'm thankful that we get the opportunity to experience her work just this once.

Thanks so much Netgalley for an ARC of Neighbors and Other Stories!

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver was an excellent read for Black History Month but would be fantastic just for when you need your next beautiful short story collection.

As author Tayari Jones says in her lovely introduction to this work, “Neighbors evokes the feeling of sorting through a time capsule sealed and buried in the yard of a Southern African Methodist Episcopal church in the early 1960s…Oliver explores the changing America while beautifully documenting the culture of Black Americans living in the South.”

I’m so glad I selected it for my @bookofthemonth add-on and thank you to @dreamscape_media for the ALC to complement my reading experience.

#blackhistorymonth #blackexcellence #februaryreads #bookclub #booksbooksbooks #bookofthemonth #shortstories #readblackstack #neighbors #dianeoliver

This was a really well read audiobook. And I really enjoyed the stories as well—Oliver has a way of capturing relationships so perfectly and intriguingly.

In isolation, these stories are fine but, as a collection, there wasn't enough variety for me. They were very similar and sometimes I didn't even entirely feel like I was switching to a different story.

Diane Oliver’s stories really shine a light on the complexities of Black life in the 50s and 60s. Oliver does a spectacular job inserting you into a character’s mind no matter who they are.

With 16 short stories, Oliver covers a variety of specific life experiences through some fantastical lenses as well as realistic ones. Some darker stories regarding how far we’ll go to protect the ones we love as well as less intense, snippets of life.

Emana Rachelle narrates this spectacularly although I do think I’ll reread this (or more specifically “Frozen Voices”) just to see the words structure. Listening to Frozen Voices in particular was a bit difficult since there is so much repetition that I worried my phone was playing something wrong at a point.

Overall, I highly recommend this story. Although Oliver is no longer alive, I think she has captured pieces of life 60+ years ago and portrays some experiences that unfortunately still occurs in some shape today.

The narrator was perfect for the type of stories that Diane Oliver was telling. The pacing, tone and overall production was exactly what was needed for such a serious and culturally poignant collection.

The stories are all rooted during the height of racial tensions in the ‘60s in America. So while not easy to read, it was also so reflective of how much and yet how little has changed since then.

The stories that resonated with me the most were: Neighbors and Mint Juleps Not Served Here. I'm so pleased that I decided to pick this one up and that the publisher granted me access to the audiobook, because now I have found an author that I want to look even further into.

NEIGHBORS is a collection of stories written by Diane Oliver, an author who passed away back in 1966 when she was only 22. This is sadly her only collection, but it includes fourteen powerful stories. I'm about halfway through the collection already because each story is fantastic, and each leaves me thinking that I want to read just one more. I'll have finished the collection in no time.

They are engaging stories while also making a clear (and sadly still relevant to the modern world) point about race and racism in 50s / 60s America. I really appreciate the variety in these stories varying from very real feeling stories to darker twists and the definitely out of the normal weird (the first instance involving a character actually disappearing). This was a collection good to pick up and read a story here and there over the space of several days.

This is an interesting combination of a variety of short stories about a plethora of African Americans lives and families in America. This is a heavy collection that combines prejudices, education, interracial interactions, extramarital love, racism, siblings, etc.
I struggle to rate books like this, because it takes a specific audience to appreciate these stories and history.