Us And Them: The Year's Best Outsider Fiction from NPR by Danielle Evans, Reginald Dwayne Betts

When I sat down to write this list, I realized that I would need to define what "outsider fiction" was in the first place, a daunting prospect. I came up with (and then discarded) several definitions that seemed to me problematic because they posited the "inside" as fixed and unchanging, or insider status as only an accident of birth or demographics. Much of the fiction on this list recognizes that boundaries between inside and outside are fluid and always shifting, and that people can shift with them. Still, the books retain a certain sensibility of outsider status, an identity forged by characters well aware that they must define themselves in light of or in opposition to external forces that might seek to impose definitions or limit possibilities. Beyond that, these books are all great, provocative reads that I'm excited to have encountered in 2010.

This is a really good, well put together "best of" list. Check it out, here. See also: Death Is Not an Option: Stories