Setting

Physical setting

The events described in the short story “The Inevitable” by Daniel A. Hoyt take place in the United States. The narrator is “touring the Midwest folk-music circuit” where the audience is “all white, like me” (l. 19), as the narrator puts it. Some events take place in Kansas, where the narrator has a concert and where she engages in a conflict with a former police officer (l. 9). 

The city of Ferguson, Missouri, also plays an important role in the story, as it is the place where Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer:

Right before I went on, I saw it on the TV in the egg-yolk-yellow greenroom: a cop killed a black teen named Michael Brown. The sound was off, but I saw police with assault rifles. I saw tear gas. I saw black people with their hands in the air. (ll. 15-18)

The conflict between the white police officer and Michael Brown infl...