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gadicohen93's review against another edition
2.0
This was disappointing. The author's bitterness -- obviously warranted -- served more to gatekeep and exclude readers from the movement than to inspire. It was a provocative book. I had to stop reading it multiple times, exasperated with the author's swaggering academic attitude, her snarky asides that felt more stylistic than meaningful, her construction of insignificant arguments. Her sense of entitlement! For example, the last essay: She eviscerates David Brooks and his NYT article about how fancy Italian sandwich ingredients are "ruining America", then looks up his Twitter followers and establishes that he follows only 6 black women on Twitter out of 350ish accounts, then uses this fact almost single-handedly to make an argument about the state of media today. How does this pass as interesting, substantial, convincing criticism? Why does she choose not to engage with his article at all? And almost every one of her essays felt like that -- superficial, obsessed with nomenclature rather than material inequalities and conditions. (Some essays were interesting and important, like her essays on "ethnic blacks" and the way members of her family defended R Kelly.) At some point, her essay about beauty -- and white appropriation and domination of beauty in the culture -- just devolves into repeating the same argument, over and over again, in different articulations. It's not a groundbreaking argument and repeating it snarkily over and over again does not make it more more convincing. On the sentence level, the author had some real doozies: "Like whiteness itself, Obama was because Trump is." Are we supposed to find this profound? I'd contrast this book to Trick Mirror, where Jia Tolentino approaches issues of race and class with curiosity and humility.
laura_corsi's review against another edition
4.0
Brilliant! Definitely something I will re-read again and again as it proves just how much work I need to do to somewhat comprehend the black woman's experience in America.
nellethebelle's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
4.5
ingread27's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent. An important read. These are essays, and so are written in a logical manner that was both clear to follow and complex. I will need to listen again (the author read her own book) in order to go deeper on all the information and concepts in these essays.
thepetitepunk's review against another edition
Quick to read and very informative. Most of the information wasn’t particularly new to me, but it’s a great introduction into some hot sociological topics. Even though there wasn’t too much here that I didn’t already know, I still found this memoir to be engaging. The writing was detailed but also incredibly accessible/readable.