Lite Reads Selection: ‘Crazy They Call Me’ by Zadie Smith

Welcome to The Feminist Bibliothecary’s Lite Reads, where we will read a different short story every week, and discuss it here and on social media. This week’s Lite Reads selection is Crazy They Call Me by Zadie Smith.

Crazy They Call Me was published in The New Yorker in 2017. The story is written in second person, and is about American jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). The story served as an introduction to Jerry Dantzic: Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill (also published in 2017), which is the collected photographs of Billie Holiday, taken by Jerry Dantzic. The photographs directly inspired the story. Mentioned within the story is Billie Holiday’s famous song Strange Fruit, which I recommend listening to before, during, or after (partially for the mood setting, partially because it’s an amazing song).

Zadie Smith (1975-) is a British writer of Jamaican and English descent who is known for her novels, short stories, and essays. She is best known for her novels White Teeth (2000) and Swing Time (2016). She has been publishing short stories and essays with The New Yorker for nearly two decades. Smith’s most recent work is Feel Free (2018), which is a collection of essays. Her next novel, The Fraud, is due to be released in 2019. Smith is also a creative writing professor at NYU.

Crazy They Call Me was published in The New Yorker, and so it can be read on their website for free. The New Yorker website does have a limit to how many articles you can view on their website per month for free (and any more than that requires waiting or a digital subscription), so just be careful of how many times you need to click into the link if you want to avoid the paywall. The story can be read in full and listened to as read by the author here, and it can be listened to (without the text of the story present, still read by the author) here.

Join us in the comments section here, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to participate in discussions throughout the week. You can also join in on the discussion at Litsy by following @elizabethlk.