Why Visit America

June 1, 2020
In Baker’s sophomore collection (after Hybrid Creatures), the mundane details of everyday life are tweaked in subtle but surprising, fantastical ways. “Rites” follows a Minnesota family’s frustration with their ornery Uncle Orson, who refuses to perform his “last rites,” which are expected of all people over the age of 70 and are essentially a suicide ceremony. In “Life Sentence,” a felon is sent home for “reintroduction” after a procedure that permanently erased his memory of everything but his family’s faces, his punishment for a terrible, unknown crime. And in the title story, a libertarian town in Texas votes to secede from the United States in protest against government corruption, renaming itself America. America’s first town hall is surprisingly progressive, passing such reforms as the abolition of gendered titles and conversion to the metric system. With such a voluminous collection, there will inevitably be writerly flourishes that begin to grate, like Baker’s reliance on the first person plural or his love of a list, but there are plenty of strong stories, the best of which are rooted in specific political or cultural critiques. Despite its flaws, this is a smart, imaginative, and thoughtful collection.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
In 13 cautionary speculative tales spanning America, Baker (Hybrid Creatures, 2018) evokes a hilariously terrifying future that challenges assumptions about sexuality, mental health, death, and identity both personal and national. In the George Saunders-esque title story, a Texas town secedes from the U.S., forming a micro-nation called America, whose inhabitants struggle to unite over their progressive values, views on foreigners, and a lone dissenter. In Rites, aging adults are expected to make room for future generations through public suicide ceremonies; then, odd Uncle Orson refuses to die, shaming his family. When two nerdy adult brothers begin caring for their niece in Fighting Words, they seek to prove their manhood, plotting revenge against her teenage tormentor. In an alternate reality, where life happens in reverse (people are born in coffins and slowly spit up their food), the artist in To Be Read Backwards gradually discovers the source of his crippling depression. And in The Transition, a twentysomething social outcast decides to have his mind converted into digital data, and his mother frantically scans his past for an explanation. Bold, captivating, and deeply relevant, Baker's imaginative stories offer approachable, optimistic perspectives on morally ambiguous topics facing Americans, including what it means to be one nation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2020
A journey across a fictional version of America that's a few degrees off-kilter. Baker's second collection of short stories uses satire and elements of speculative fiction to grapple with the contradictions of life in modern America. The title story is about a small town that secedes from Texas and the United States and names itself "America." Along the way, the residents fall into bickering about everything from whether capital letters represent an unfair "class system" to whether setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July makes one a traitor to America. The stories take actual social issues and amplify or distort them. In "Rites," people are expected to choose the means of their own suicide once they are old enough to become a drain on society. The story begins with a woman dousing herself in gasoline, rowing a boat to the center of a pond, and lighting a match while her family cheers her on. Gender identity is mirrored in "The Transition," which follows a mother struggling to accept her son's wish to leave his body and upload his consciousness to a computer. In "The Sponsor," consumerism is satirized in a couple's desperate attempt to secure an impressive corporate sponsor for their upcoming wedding. The writing is sharp and the scenarios are creative, yet it too often feels like the author is writing toward a thesis. For example, "Appearance" is set in a world where countless, mostly unnamed, unidentifiable people suddenly appeared throughout America. The narrator of the story is part of a family that hates the so-called "Unwanted" because they're willing to work menial jobs for below minimum wage. The narrator and his grandfather make a habit of kidnapping local Unwanteds and dumping them across state lines. Setting aside the ickiness of comparing undocumented immigrants to identity-less zombies, the parallel to modern immigration debates is all too obvious. Baker is fascinated by modern America, and each story is an attempt to explore an important issue. However, once the reader gets the satire, the effect of the story and the collection quickly wears off. A collection of witty, imaginative stories striving to be morality tales.

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