A review by cainwaogu
Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris

3.0

This is a groundbreaking book. Yet as a millennial overly pruned by today's ever- evolving discourse on sex and sexuality so many portions of the book were almost painful to read. The fault may lie with my lack of exposure to the interiority of living a closeted life but some of passages that may have been intended as deprecation or quips at one's sexuality, to me, read as self hatred. The women were all one dimensional and didn't have any real significance unless they working to safeguard the institutions of hetero- normality. The gender assumptions, respectability, the use of female instead of woman (personal pet peeve), the stereotypes, etc. Sometimes the book read as a journal entry instead of narrative. But I did enjoy How "of it's time it was" ie, the music, banter, professional woes, black bourgeois college life. But to those who are reading it or are thinking of reading this book, be kind. Many of the works that we enjoy today were published because of brave books like this one.