3.64 AVERAGE

lauraloujeu's profile picture

lauraloujeu's review

1.5

I loved the anecdotes about childhood, family, and ambition. I adored the adventures  of friends, colleagues, and peers. Rae's voice was exact, entertaining, and endearing. I'm saddened that she tarnished this with anti Asian rhetoric. The use of a slur to describe someone's eyes and the generalizations about Asian men (but only the right type of Asian men) made me recoil at the words. I'm not sure what prompted this use of racist language and generalizations, but I am disappointed because this book is otherwise a lovely series of deeply personal stories. 

I really liked Issa Rae's HBO series but the writing here is not engaging and the stories were uninteresting. The intro about her name and the first chapter about her experience with tech in the early 90s grabbed me but then everything else was meh. I couldn't really understand why she chose to tell the stories she did, they didn't go too deep in any way.
funny lighthearted medium-paced

bits's review

3.0
funny reflective slow-paced
emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

This essay collection is funny, but pretty short and a little disjointed. I'm not familiar with author Issa Rae's other creative projects, but the book feels kind of like she's thrown in everything that crossed her mind. While I would have appreciated more cohesion of topic and theme, the individual pieces are generally fun, with the opening essay on the author's childhood in America Online chatrooms the clear highlight for me. Overall I'd say it's worth the read.
emotional funny fast-paced

I actually really like this read. It had a lot of funny parts and things that I could relate to.
lighthearted slow-paced

 Issa Rae reflects on growing up an Awkward Black Girl, and the importance of representation in television.  Overall, I found this fairly lighthearted.  I personally didn’t feel it very memorable.  Nevertheless, it was nice to hear more about the Insecure creator, but I thought I would like this more. 
 
This was a fairly lengthy six hours …   
funny lighthearted medium-paced