The Office of Historical Corrections

The Office of Historical Corrections (2020) by Danielle Evans is a collection of six short stories and a novella. These stories discuss themes of loss and grief, discrimination, and the importance of history as they relate to Black women in the present-day United States. Additionally, they touch on the idea of making corrections, whether it be in the form of physical corrections to history as in the titular story or through apologies and the acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the past.

The collection was nominated for The Story Prize and the Chautauqua Prize and received the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize for mid-career fiction writers. Evans’s prior collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (2011), won the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for debut writers. Her work builds on her own experiences as a Black woman to discuss issues of racism, discrimination, and unique issues that women of color face due to their gender and ethnicity.

This guide uses the 2020 hardcover edition from Riverhead Books.

Content Warning: These stories depict racism, racist violence, gun violence, murder, domestic violence, and suicide. The story “The Office of Historical Corrections” uses a racial expletive not reproduced in this guide.

Plot Summaries

“Happily Ever After” tells the story of Lyssa, who works at a Titanic replica in the gift shop. One day, a pop star rents out the site to film her new music video. The director sees Lyssa working and chooses to have her in the video dressed as a sea monster. She and her coworker, Mackenzie, speculate that she was only chosen because the director wants to sleep with her—which turns out to be true. After shooting concludes, Lyssa sleeps with him, and he apologizes for not using a condom. However, she reassures him that she does not have any ovaries, which is untrue. Although her mother died of ovarian cancer and it was recommended she have her ovaries removed, she decided against it. She reflects on how she broke up with her boyfriend at the time because he suggested she do the surgery but did not suggest that they have children first. As Lyssa watches the music video on the day of its release, she sees the way the light plays off her body and the items in the gift shop. She imagines the dark places that hide unexpected dangers like the cancer potentially growing inside her.

In the story “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” Dori is holding a three-day, rainbow-themed wedding as she marries JT. Rena, a friend of JT’s, attends the bachelorette party but feels uncomfortable with how Dori treats her—Dori is unconvinced that nothing romantic happened between JT and Rena in the past. Rena sneaks away from the bachelorette party and goes back to the hotel, where she runs into Michael—one of the groomsmen—and the two sleep together. She leaves his room in the middle of the night because she has nightmares about her little sister, Elizabeth, who was shot in the head by her husband, who thought she was cheating on him. Rena runs into JT, who is sneaking out and calling off the wedding. She initially tries to stop him, but after he insults her, she lets him go. The following morning, Dori comes looking for JT, and Rena lies to her, saying that JT went to Ohio. Dori and Rena drive to Ohio, but partway there, Rena admits that she lied and that she really has no idea where JT went. Instead of being angry, Dori drives her to a waterpark, where the two spend the day riding water slides and floating in the pool, even after JT texts to say that he is back and wants to have the wedding. Rena reflects on how long it has been since she has had a day like this and remembers spending a similar day with Elizabeth when they were younger.

In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” college student Clare Williams comes home from summer break and sleeps with Jackson. He takes a photo of her posing in front of his truck in a Confederate flag bikini and posts it online. As Clare returns to college, the photo gains attention, particularly from her Black hallmate, Carmen. Adamant that she did nothing wrong, Clare fights back against the threats that she receives. She slides a photo of the Confederate flag under Carmen’s door, hangs another picture of it in her dorm room window, and refuses to listen to her adviser or the dean at a disciplinary meeting. With the help of the campus libertarians, Clare plans a town hall to allow for a discussion about her actions and how the other students feel. However, as the town hall approaches, her past is uncovered: Her Black childhood friend, Aaron, died in a car crash while he was attempting to drive Clare home when she was drunk. He was being harassed by a group of white men, who were trying to protect Clare after seeing her put in a car by a Black man. At the town hall, Clare waits for the Black students, including Carmen, to speak. However, they remain silent as several white students speak and even apologize for Clare’s actions. At the end of the town hall, the Black students silently get up and hand blank comment cards to the moderator, then leave.

“Alcatraz” tells the story of Cecilia, who recently moved to Oakland, California, from the Bronx. Her mother, Anne, grew up without parents and was raised by her grandparents, referring to her grandpa as Papa. Her father was Black and her mother was white, and she was largely excluded from the rest of her family because of her skin color. Papa spent two years in Alcatraz prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. Although he was acquitted, he was never given an honorable discharge or veteran’s benefits and spent years trying to get them. Anne continues the fight even after his death. Her appeals are finally stopped by the Supreme Court, putting an end to her fight for the $227,035.87 she has calculated they are owed. Cecilia plans a visit to Alcatraz to find closure. She invites Anne’s cousin, Nancy, even though Anne and Nancy have a troubled past. At the prison, Anne sobs in a prison cell, and Nancy comforts her. As Cecilia waits in the gift shop, she steals a key, contemplating how much more she would have to steal to get back what her family is owed. Although Anne and Nancy meet a few times after Alcatraz, they never fully form a relationship. Cecilia feels accomplished for getting them together at all.

In “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want,” a genius artist vanishes from the public, leaving people to speculate about his whereabouts. The Model/Actress Who Dated Him a While Ago publicly states that she hopes he fell into a volcano. When the artist returns, he does so by posting grandiose apologies to everyone he has ever wronged, displaying videos in the public park, making announcements in grocery stores, and setting up a pop-up bar with the apologies written on the walls. The people he has wronged are referred to by names like Former Personal Assistant and Short-Suffering Second Ex-wife. The artist sets up a gallery called Forgiveness, in which he replicates all of the apologies and invites everyone he has wronged. He waits in the last room at the mouth of a volcano. People react with varying degrees of annoyance and disinterest, and many choose not to attend the gallery. One, however, The Girl Who Had Wondered All These Years What to Call It, confronts him in the last room. When he fails to figure out how to apologize to her, she shoves him into the volcano, where he dies. Very few of the people to whom he apologized grieve him; many assume that there was some trick, that it was his plan all along, or as the Model/Actress correctly assumes, that he never thought he’d be pushed into the volcano, because he assumed he deserved forgiveness. The Model/Actress moves forward with an already planned volcano-themed line of makeup, reflecting on how unapologetically ruthless she has had to be to make it this far in her career.

“Anything Could Disappear” is about Vera, a young woman traveling to New York City for a fresh start. On the bus, a woman drops a two-year-old child off next to Vera, then gets off the bus before Vera realizes that she left her child behind. Because she is carrying drugs for a delivery, Vera feels as though she has no choice but to take the boy—whom she finds out is named William—with her into the city. She delivers the drugs to Derek, who owns a courier service in the city, and is given $10,000, which she uses to get an apartment and furnish it for her and William. Just as she realizes that she needs a job and a babysitter, Derek offers her a job at his business, assuring her that most of what they deliver is legal and allowing her to bring William to the office. As she works and becomes happy, eventually getting into a relationship with Derek, she works to erase her old life, deleting her social media and changing her phone number. Eventually, she cuts off contact with her mother. Just as she is happy, however, a delivery boy, Jacob, dies on the job. Derek gets sued, and he decides that he needs to start over in California. He makes fake identification for himself, Vera, and William, but Vera realizes how distraught she is over Jacob’s death and decides she needs to find William’s father. She discovers that he lives in Chicago, so she goes there, watching him at his home and realizing how much William has been missing out on by living with her. Ultimately, she decides to give William to his father, leaving a note explaining that she did not take him intentionally and that he has been cared for. She disappears into the world.

In “The Office of Historical Corrections,” Cassie works for the Institute for Public History (IPH) as a field agent, tasked with going around Washington, DC, to make historical corrections to statues, memorials, events, and more to ensure the public is knowledgeable about true history. Lately, she has been trying to rectify corrections made by Genevieve, a former employee who was overzealous in her efforts to ensure that nothing was omitted from history. She often added extraneous information such as atrocious acts committed by the person being commemorated or victims of certain events. Cassie and Genevieve attended the same private school, and Cassie was shocked when Genevieve showed up at IPH to work with a renewed interest in Black and impoverished DC, something she ignored in high school. Genevieve’s latest correction that is being challenged is to a memorial in Cherry Mill, Wisconsin, where a Black man named Josiah was killed when locals burned down his tannery. Genevieve removed the old plaque and put up a new one, listing the people responsible for the fire, but new information has come out that Josiah might not have really died.

Cassie gets to Cherry Mill and meets with Genevieve, but they are interrupted when a man calling himself White Justice vandalizes the plaque and declares himself a member of the Free Americans—an organization that constantly combats the IPH’s efforts. A local informs Cassie that the vandalism was likely done by Chase, the great grandson of Ella Mae, the only woman in the group who burned down Josiah’s business. After meeting with Josiah’s daughter, Cassie becomes convinced that Josiah did indeed survive, but she is still troubled by who wrote Josiah’s obituary. She finally makes the connection that Ella Mae and Minerva—Josiah’s sister—are the same person, with Minerva having left her family at 16 and choosing to live as a white woman. After sharing the news with Genevieve, they are unsure whether she warned Josiah to escape the fire or felt she needed to kill him to protect her Black identity. Regardless, Genevieve becomes convinced that she needs to tell Chase about his Black ancestry.

Cassie wakes up the following morning, panicked and realizing that confronting Chase is a bad idea. She receives a link to White Justice’s livestream, where he is holding Genevieve at gunpoint. He forces her to read aloud the correction she made to the plaque, which now lists Ella Mae as Josiah’s sister, forcing White Justice to confront his Black ancestry. He angrily shoots her. Cassie closes her eyes and hears the gunshot in the distance.