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3.0 AVERAGE
3.0 AVERAGE
A quick read giving readers a glimpse into the dark, dank underbelly of urban life. The dialogue is raw, the writing is atrocious, and blunt at times but the author does a good job of showing the love between the grandmother (Mrs. Watkins) and her granddaughter Myyah.
The main character of this book is Frequisha, a thirty-five year old single mother of three who is living in the dangerous city of Englewood, Illinois in section 8 housing. Frequisha spoils her two oldest sons as her pride and joy since they are working towards beings drug dealers. She treats her third child, daughter Myyah like trash since she hates the girl’s father Austin. Fredquisha views Myyah only as a way to get money since she has had her diagnosed as having ADHD.
Austin Watkins is currently is prison due to a parole violation. Although Austin hasn’t always made good life decisions, he wants to do right by his daughter and vows to walk the straight path upon being released from prison. Throughout the book, the reader is giving a front row seat to the trifling shenanigans of Frequisha, the hopeless of Myyah and the desperation felt by Austin as well as his mother Delores Watkins.
To me, the book doesn’t have a clear focus, gets bogged down by the overuse of the word hoe and the author clearly has a limited view of women’s roles in the world. I feel the author views women as either saintly or hoes who only exist to victimize men.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone especially if you’ve never read urban fiction before. there are much better books in the urban fiction genre by authors like Sister Soulja, Carl Weber and Terri Woods.
The main character of this book is Frequisha, a thirty-five year old single mother of three who is living in the dangerous city of Englewood, Illinois in section 8 housing. Frequisha spoils her two oldest sons as her pride and joy since they are working towards beings drug dealers. She treats her third child, daughter Myyah like trash since she hates the girl’s father Austin. Fredquisha views Myyah only as a way to get money since she has had her diagnosed as having ADHD.
Austin Watkins is currently is prison due to a parole violation. Although Austin hasn’t always made good life decisions, he wants to do right by his daughter and vows to walk the straight path upon being released from prison. Throughout the book, the reader is giving a front row seat to the trifling shenanigans of Frequisha, the hopeless of Myyah and the desperation felt by Austin as well as his mother Delores Watkins.
To me, the book doesn’t have a clear focus, gets bogged down by the overuse of the word hoe and the author clearly has a limited view of women’s roles in the world. I feel the author views women as either saintly or hoes who only exist to victimize men.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone especially if you’ve never read urban fiction before. there are much better books in the urban fiction genre by authors like Sister Soulja, Carl Weber and Terri Woods.
Nope. I tried, but no. Lol. I refuse to keep reading this. The author is doing too much and not enough at the same time. **DID NOT FINISH**
Trigger warnings: child abuse, bad hygiene descriptions, graphic sex, drug and alcohol use and abuse, vehicular accidents, death of loved ones, gang violence, graphic description of violence, fat shaming, slut shaming.
How do I review and rate this???????????
In clinical terms I’m going to say this book needed a lot editing. Lots of typos, inconsistencies, grammar errors etc. It’s evident this was self published and therefore didn’t get enough of an external perspective on proof reads. On the plus side, the author knows how to Write yo. One of the most shocking and vivid sentences I have ever come across is “It was the fragrance of abject squalor and ratchetry.” That paints a VIVID image and it’s so seamlessly put together? There’s a blend of Chicago AAVE and Charles Dickens level descriptiveness so artfully done I’m just...What am I reading!!!!!! Holy shit!!!!!!!!
Tackling the actual content is a little harder. The book is about an abusive mother and how governmental systems are decidedly against supporting incarcerated parents despite the one not in prison being worse for the kids. It ties in race dynamics, police brutality, Chicago South Side community politics, the shitty government system that does nothing with efficiency especially when it comes to black people and black youth, and so much more. It’s a whole lot packed in this tiny ebook and I’m absolutely bonked.
The hiccup I had with this was how impartial the narrators voice is. Like there’s no dancing around it, the narrator hates the abusive mother and rightfully so. Unfortunately that really flattened out her character. Obviously, abusers don’t really deserve to be seen as decent people but the complexity of being a human never should apologise for their being awful (that’s usually the partiality on the reader’s or author’s part). In fact giving horrible people a whole fleshed our character in my mind really sets the tone for “they CHOSE to be horrible people”. Point is, the abusive mother was flat and therefore a caricature in a book that touched on some real issues. That juxtaposition really didn’t help.
Additionally the narrator’s biases manifested themselves in some really nasty ways. The woman’s physical attributes like her body type and dark skin colour were used to manifest her as an unlikeable character. Her sexual habits were written about in a very disgusted tone. On the flip side, two men involved in a sexual scene weren’t given as bad of an image as the abusive mother was (they were definitely described as gross but it felt like her physical attributes and sexuality made her gross as opposed to the men being horrible people made them disgusting).
It felt like misogyny and misogynoir were used as tools against this woman. I didn’t understand why because there was no way anyone would sympathise with her after reading about how she was abusive. It felt like a dirty way to go about things and I didn’t like it. That kind of treatment towards women in the book who weren’t among the Good Characters were treated similarly. While the men were treated objectively despite being good or bad and were judged more on their behaviour than their attributes or sexual needs. Come to think of it, not a single male character was flat not even secondary and tertiary male characters.....
Parts like the above felt like they dragged on for me so it could have just been a couple of chapters and the rest was more or less fine. I don’t know.
Oh and another thing. The rest of the books written by the author give me a distinct feeling that his books are full of objectified women, colourism, and general grossness towards black women so I don't know how much I should take that into consideration especially considering it’s only a feeling and I haven’t read anything else by him.
So I think I’ve laid out all my thoughts. At the end of this ramble I still don’t know how to rate this book. Does the misogyny outweigh the message and the strangely appealing writing? I don’t think it should. Does that mean the writer gets a pass on being a dick to female characters deemed bad people? Nope. I don’t know. I really don’t know how to rate this. At moments it felt like a one and others a four star. Like two stars might make sense but it wasn’t a horrible book. Three stars could be but it WASNT AVERAGE so what do I doooooo??????
How do I review and rate this???????????
In clinical terms I’m going to say this book needed a lot editing. Lots of typos, inconsistencies, grammar errors etc. It’s evident this was self published and therefore didn’t get enough of an external perspective on proof reads. On the plus side, the author knows how to Write yo. One of the most shocking and vivid sentences I have ever come across is “It was the fragrance of abject squalor and ratchetry.” That paints a VIVID image and it’s so seamlessly put together? There’s a blend of Chicago AAVE and Charles Dickens level descriptiveness so artfully done I’m just...What am I reading!!!!!! Holy shit!!!!!!!!
Tackling the actual content is a little harder. The book is about an abusive mother and how governmental systems are decidedly against supporting incarcerated parents despite the one not in prison being worse for the kids. It ties in race dynamics, police brutality, Chicago South Side community politics, the shitty government system that does nothing with efficiency especially when it comes to black people and black youth, and so much more. It’s a whole lot packed in this tiny ebook and I’m absolutely bonked.
The hiccup I had with this was how impartial the narrators voice is. Like there’s no dancing around it, the narrator hates the abusive mother and rightfully so. Unfortunately that really flattened out her character. Obviously, abusers don’t really deserve to be seen as decent people but the complexity of being a human never should apologise for their being awful (that’s usually the partiality on the reader’s or author’s part). In fact giving horrible people a whole fleshed our character in my mind really sets the tone for “they CHOSE to be horrible people”. Point is, the abusive mother was flat and therefore a caricature in a book that touched on some real issues. That juxtaposition really didn’t help.
Additionally the narrator’s biases manifested themselves in some really nasty ways. The woman’s physical attributes like her body type and dark skin colour were used to manifest her as an unlikeable character. Her sexual habits were written about in a very disgusted tone. On the flip side, two men involved in a sexual scene weren’t given as bad of an image as the abusive mother was (they were definitely described as gross but it felt like her physical attributes and sexuality made her gross as opposed to the men being horrible people made them disgusting).
It felt like misogyny and misogynoir were used as tools against this woman. I didn’t understand why because there was no way anyone would sympathise with her after reading about how she was abusive. It felt like a dirty way to go about things and I didn’t like it. That kind of treatment towards women in the book who weren’t among the Good Characters were treated similarly. While the men were treated objectively despite being good or bad and were judged more on their behaviour than their attributes or sexual needs. Come to think of it, not a single male character was flat not even secondary and tertiary male characters.....
Parts like the above felt like they dragged on for me so it could have just been a couple of chapters and the rest was more or less fine. I don’t know.
Oh and another thing. The rest of the books written by the author give me a distinct feeling that his books are full of objectified women, colourism, and general grossness towards black women so I don't know how much I should take that into consideration especially considering it’s only a feeling and I haven’t read anything else by him.
So I think I’ve laid out all my thoughts. At the end of this ramble I still don’t know how to rate this book. Does the misogyny outweigh the message and the strangely appealing writing? I don’t think it should. Does that mean the writer gets a pass on being a dick to female characters deemed bad people? Nope. I don’t know. I really don’t know how to rate this. At moments it felt like a one and others a four star. Like two stars might make sense but it wasn’t a horrible book. Three stars could be but it WASNT AVERAGE so what do I doooooo??????
I will never judge a book by its cover ever again. This book turned out to be a lot more deep than the title originally implies. I'm actually impressed!