In their debut short story collection, Z. Hanna takes a discerning look at what happens when people search for connection in an alienating world. “I sometimes joke that I write sadtire,” the author says. “My writing process is mainly just rubbing humor and despair against each other and seeing what sparks.”

Sparks definitely ignite in the titular story, wherein a white antiracist coach tries to keep her Whiteness &  Antiracism Coaching and Consulting business afloat after her Mexican-American girlfriend leaves the relationship and the business.

One of my favorite stories in the collection, “One-Person Tent,” imagines a scenario in which a couples therapist recommends that a husband and wife stop using Google for one week. Instead, they should pose all their queries to one another instead. “The bubble popped up that meant he was typing. Watching the ellipsis ripple inside that soft pillow, imagining the eager fingers that egged it on, was suddenly the most erotic experience of my life.”

In “Odd Creature,” a lone protagonist lives in a West Virginia cabin with only a cat. When they’re finally ready to be around other people again, they take their father’s advice and arrange to meet with an 80-year-old stone mason and his wife. The story, as Z. Hanna describes it, explores the transformative power of gentleness, the porousness of one’s artistic self and daily life self, and what words can do and what they can’t. The story’s use of words and imagery are sublime. ‘“I know you’re scared,” I told him, in this new language. “I know you’re so scared.” More words came out of my hand as I put down the cloth and traced the soft tips of my fingers across his thick brow.’

The collection’s final story, “The Birmingham Effect,” veers into speculative fiction. The premise: A supervisor at an “elective prison,” where white men pay big bucks to be locked up. “Innovation through Incarceration” is the prison company’s motto. The story, while absurd, looks at the real suffering that runs up and down the class and race ladder of the prison-industrial complex and consumer culture. Again, its Z. Hanna sending out sparks, rubbing humor and despair against one another. We’re Gonna Get Through This Together is a should-read and its title, a hopeful aphorism in contemporary America.