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Book Review: ‘Carefree Black Girls’ by Zeba Blay

Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture by Carefree Black Girls Zeba Blay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay examines how a viral hashtag focused on Black females living their truths forces the author to revisit periods of pop culture history where the notion of being a carefree Black girl actually comes with some hard truths.

Yet the culture that Black women pour talents and their creativity into, the culture that emulates Black women, steals from Black women, needs Black women, is the same culture that belittles Black women, excludes Black women, ignores Black women.

Culture critic Zeba Blay coined the phrase #carefreeblackgirl in 2013 as “a way to carve out a space of celebration and freedom for Black women online.” She studies how the hashtag evolved in the chapter “Free of Cares,” starting with a phrase of the early twentieth century: “I’m free, white, and 21!” This phrase became a Hollywood catchphrase between the 1920s and 1940s with Black journalists at the time criticizing the phrase as perpetuating White supremacy since being White equates freedom, which is the untrue experience to groups who are not considered White. Though the term falls out of vernacular, the author sees the phrase still play out today from Sex and the City to the modern-day Karens quick to call the police on anyone who’s Black. And even the phrase “carefree Black girl” takes a life of its own where it seems to easily be bestowed upon lighter-skinned, thin Black actresses such as Zendaya and Yara Shahidi while Black critics argue Black females will never have the comfort to be carefree in a Eurocentric society. The phrase even derives from fellow Black writer Collier Meyerson’s Tumblr blog called “Carefree White Girls” that featured White female celebrities from Taylor Swift to Zooey Deschanel who epitomize the “deification of white womanhood.”

The first chapter “Bodies” explores how the Black female body is berated constantly from the Middle Passage to the present. Lizzo and her body is the highlight of the chapter, particularly a moment in April 2020 when the pop star was twerking for a charity “dance-a-thon” hosted via social media by Diddy to raise money for people affected by COVID-19. Once Lizzo begins twerking, Diddy tells her to stop because the watchers need family-friendly entertainment, especially on Easter Sunday. Later in the Instagram live special, reality TV star Draya Michele, who’s thinner and lighter-skinned, begins twerking without any protest. Many think it’s fatphobic for Lizzo to be told to not twerk in public. Others berate Lizzo all the time for revealing her body on social media every chance she gets. The author also shows how Lizzo announced she would be participating in a smoothie detox and points out how White female fat-positive bloggers accused Lizzo of being fatphobic.

The conversation on Lizzo turns to the 1990s portrayal of Countess Vaughn on the hit show Moesha about a Black girl growing up in South Los Angeles. Countess played opposite pop star Brandy’s Moesha as best friend Kim Parker. Her weight becomes a constant punchline, many realize after reliving the show twenty years later when its August 2020 debut on Netflix alarms Black Twitter as tweeters share the collective disgust. The author even calls out the desexualization of fat Black women in entertainment. She points to the portrayal of Kelli, played by Natasha Rothwell, on HBO’s Insecure, where explicit sex scenes are a constant but never feature Kelli. The character talks about her sexual romps, but we never see them or meet her lovers. In the recent series finale, Kelli announces she’s having a baby with a character the audience barely knows because her romantic love growth is never shown on screen compared to the other three main female leads.

The author puts a recent moment like Lizzo’s twerking for COVID-19 relief under a microscope and another moment from a generation ago about Kim Parker’s treatment from her so-called friends on her weight. Then there’s self-reflection as the author views how hard it is to accept her own body thanks to the Eurocentric beauty standard where her body, Lizzo’s body, Countess’ body are unacceptable, and the fact that they are living in their body is too much for many people to accept.

In “Strong Black Lead” playing on Netflix’s name for Black programming, the author details her mental health struggles including suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts. (The book comes with a trigger warning in the beginning.) What she was going through materialized in her writings at the time as she pondered how she was really helping readers then with sharing her draining experiences. It makes her think of other Black women in her life who have struggled but are determined to “stay strong.” The strong Black female trope is examined with calling out somewhat beloved characters such as Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope on the Shonda Rhimes-helmed political TV drama Scandal to Viola Davis’ Aibileen Clark in the film The Help that many view as problematic with the White savior theme.

Overall, the book is like reading viral pop culture tweets coming from Black Twitter and getting the context that you may never think to reference as the reason why you would like such tweets. The content dives deeper with making comparisons between famous Black women living the height of celebrity now to those who lived at the height in yesteryears. The author shows how the battle is the same, rooted in underappreciation for the Black female’s talent whereas a non-Black female’s talent may receive better treatment over her weight, her age, her appearance. It’s amazing to see the author tie in so many current events with past events and pick them apart to study the relevance and the definition of being a carefree Black girl.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be’ by Nichole Perkins

Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins is a meaty biographical essay collection following a writer through her family trauma, romance drama, and the pop culture threads that color every moment.

Images of white girls in love came easily, but everywhere I turned, Black girls were warned.

“Fast” examines the adolescent woes of being a girl labeled by her hormones and where they lead her. The author talks about the warnings that lurked around every corner, seeing the caution her sister Izzie had to take coming of age in the 1980s to their mother starting the family in high school. When the author’s classmates become pregnant barely out of middle school, she writes about seeking distance from her pregnant friends and desiring love like the White girls she noticed finding love onscreen in the films she watched with Izzie.

In another early chapter called “The Women,” the author illustrates her relationships with the main women in her life: Izzie, their mother, her great-grandmother Muh’Deah, and her aunt C. She paints these women with extraordinary detail of life’s mundaneness such as Muh’Deah brushing her hair “using a pink Goody brush with white bristles” and recalling the first time she saw the matriarch herself let her hair down for a male neighbor. Her aunt C drives with both feet in case she has to press the brake for an emergency, but when she takes Nichole to the bookstore, the author for once doesn’t feel judged by her book choices and that means the world to her amid her parents’ divorce.

I didn’t want to bring any more attention to my lack of breasts or whatever else I thought was the marker of moving into womanhood. So when junior high hit, and my parents finally divorced, about three years after Control came out, I started adding more and more black clothing to my wardrobe.

The author’s fashion evolution starting in black is inspired by Janet Jackson, according to the chapter “Janet Jackson and the All-Black Uniform.” Janet’s 1986 independence anthem Control becomes the soundtrack of her parents’ fights as her mother plays the eponymous album’s lead single constantly. The pop star’s all-black uniform choice catches the author’s attention, and she adopts it as her own uniform as she hides her changing body to feel comfortable. Then she notices Janet evolve as an artist via adding colors into her wardrobe. How the author goes over her family’s situation to her own situation playing to the tune of Janet’s iconic song stresses the pop culture impact in her life.

The television show Bones helped pull me from an especially aggressive depressive moment in my life, but Frasier is what I use as a regular antidepressant.

Bingeing TV is a theme in two separate chapters where she discusses how the two mainstream shows targeted to mainly White audiences—one a comedy and the other a drama—helped her through transitions that also include health issues from living with irritable bowel syndrome after being treated for a ruptured spleen. Even in “HBCUs Taught Me,” she absorbs lessons from the 1988 Spike Lee film School Daze and the 1987-1993 NBC sitcom A Different World that brings her to Dillard University in New Orleans, despite being a Nashville native growing up adjacent to HBCUs Fisk University and Tennessee State University.

As she revisits her family life and her home life in different stages, the author is honest about her misadventures of finding love and being afraid she’ll never find it. “My Kameelah-Ass List” examines the lengthy list of qualities she wants in a man, inspired by Real World cast member Kameelah Phillips in the reality show’s 1997 season in Boston. The author writes how Kameelah had 200 items on her list in what she wanted in a man, including his weight and not having children. So the author goes about making her own list, which eventually turns into an internet chatroom magnet for opinions on judging a man with a list when a woman may not live up to the man’s standards either. Kameelah, now an ob-gyn who recently celebrated her 10th wedding anniversary, may have been successful with her list, but the author, on the other hand, only got to 86 items she wanted in a man that she lists in the book.

Overall, the blend of topics are entertaining and eye-opening as she dissects what she learned from her experiences and how societal misconceptions affect those experiences like with her familial relationships, romantic relationships, and friendships in real life and online. The narrator expresses through the essays her fear of not getting everything she wants, but as she ages, that fear morphs yet doesn’t impede her growth. From a Black girl from Nashville who grew up to be a writer, the stories are relatable as they convey her growing pains.

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Book Review: ‘Minor Feelings’ by Cathy Park Hong

Minor Feelings: An Asian American ReckoningMinor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong is an essay collection from a Korean-American writer who feels her voice, as well as the voices from other Asian Americans mostly women, hasn’t been fully understood on purpose.

The author describes “minor feelings” as the feelings nonwhite people develop about their own cultures based on the stereotypes they see in America and believing those stereotypes. She uses life experiences to convey those feelings, and the not-so-minor impact, that she had to rework and create her own philosophies about race and ethnicity in America.

Growing up in Los Angeles first in the Koreatown section, she discusses going to school where the Asian girls seemed to adopt the Latina and Black teenage girl culture they saw in the media and other times when she wrestled with how Asian identity was depicted in the mainstream. Her experience, for example, with the Los Angeles 1992 uprising barely exists since her family already moved out of Koreatown at the time, living the suburban American dream. From what she saw in the media, she said she felt torn knowing the Black community endured racism from the Korean shop owners in the area and those same shop owners becoming targets for destruction during the uprising.

Another story that stands out and runs long in the book surrounds Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a Korean-American writer and artist who was murdered in 1982. The author describes learning about Theresa and her most famous work, Dictée. But the author worries that Theresa’s life being cut short at 31 after a man rapes and murders her in New York City overwhelmed her potential future. The author also describes the frustration that Theresa’s murder failed to gain much attention in the media as Theresa is just known as an “Oriental” woman and what happened to her fades. She goes into additional detail with describing the court case that wasn’t covered much in the media and interviewing Theresa’s brothers and friends for more insight into keeping her legacy alive.

Overall, the essay collection is informative. What she chooses to focus on is interesting and thought-provoking though some parts are more memorable than others.

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what's lit

Author Jia Tolentino and Model Kaia Gerber Discuss What to Take From ‘Trick Mirror’ During Quarantine

The novel coronavirus quarantine has produced another celebrity book club. Supermodel Kaia Gerber, daughter of the legendary Cindy Crawford, started a book club that’s already receiving praise from fans and young Hollywood.

Now a month into her book club, she had an Instagram Live conversation with Jia Tolentino, the author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, on Friday night with an average high of 2,200 viewers. Kaia started the chat saying she found the book to be a refreshing take on modern-day philosophy.

This is how publisher Penguin Random House describes the essay collection: “Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die.”

A staff writer at The New Yorker, Jia talked about the ills of the internet and social media, a focus in her book, but also mentioned its current necessity as we grapple with self-isolation and quarantine due to the coronavirus crisis. Jia brought up how the internet and social media has made people perform for attention. She asked Kaia about her personal experiences since the Gen Z model has 5.5 million followers due to her career and stature.

Now 18, Kaia said she started her Instagram at 14 and noticed how social media can change a person and their professional goals and give more attention to influencers rather than, for example, doctors and nurses who are saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The internet, for better for worse, is the biggest change of this era,” Jia said during the conversation. “It’s become this nervous system of our society… There’s an unavoidable centrality to it that seems like every story in a way is an internet story, no matter what.” She added we have a natural impulse to be seen, to be recognized, to be liked, and the business of social media takes these behaviors and monetizes “every inch of human life.”

They discussed how social media and the internet has to be impacting teens’ lives now and adding unique pressures never before experienced. Jia, a millennial who said she graduated during the Great Recession, said it would’ve been “dark” if she owned a smartphone in high school. With dreams to attend Columbia University, Kaia said as social media became a regular existence around her and she became hyper cautious in order to stay clean for college application times.

Jia pointed out to the feminism parts of the book where women were not able to apply for credit cards alone until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974 and how marriage is supposed to be the main life-changing event for a woman. Kaia brought up how her mother’s wedding dress was revolutionary in a way because it was a slip dress when sexy was looked down upon for a bride.

The chat came to a close with Jia saying how clear it is during the coronavirus quarantine that we can’t wholly replace in-person interaction with the internet and social media. Kaia said she would read anything else Jia writes and added the excitement of being able to have the conversation:

“This is the coolest thing ever. Truly the only people I fangirl over are writers and authors because I admire it so much because the idea of sitting down and writing an entire book is so intimidating to me, but I would read all of them.”

Earlier in the month, Kaia had an Instagram Live chat with the stars of Normal People on Hulu, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. The TV series is based on Sally Rooney’s literary fiction book about two unlikely friends who develop a complex relationship in high school then college.

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what's lit

Samantha Irby Shares How She Went From Author to TV Writer

Comedic essayist and blogger Samantha Irby wrote a lengthy article about how she was tapped to be a part of a TV show perfectly made for her.

Samantha, the author of the best-selling essay collections We Are Never Meeting In Real Life, Meaty and Wow, No Thank You, is a writer on Hulu’s Shrill, starring Saturday Night Live‘s Aidy Bryant based on a novel by Lindy West.

Shrill follows Aidy’s character, Annie, as she navigates her mid-20s as a low-paid journalist with a slacker boyfriend, aging parents, and a supportive friend circle in Portland. Except Annie is a plus-size woman who realizes she can be comfortable with her body and get whatever she desires.

In a recent Guardian article titled “I had zero experience in a writers’ room. Then I was offered my dream job in LA,” Samantha describes how Lindy invited her to be a part of the Los Angeles writers’ team for Shrill, the TV show. With her characteristically claustrophobic writing style with packing as many words as she can into a sentence, Samantha expressed how she dealt with her imposter syndrome.

After the first week, I waited for someone to show up and tell me, “OK, hoe, it’s cute that you thought we were just gonna let you sit in a chair and get paid to think about imaginary people. Here’s your scrub brush, you remember where the toilets are, right?” And… I would do it. I would scrub those toilets.

Within her two months on staff, she said she warmed up to LA by watching celebrities, collecting crystals, and eating a lot of tacos.

She also discusses one of the biggest moments on the TV series during the first season where Annie fights to cover a story on a body-positive pool party for women in the “Pool” episode. She goes to the Fat Babe Pool Party, fully clothed, unbelieving how the women are comfortable in their swimsuits. Then she takes in the energy around her and jumps into the pool.

Aidy Bryant as Annie Easton in Shrill

The popular episode saw plagiarism claims by Virgie Tovar, the author of the 2018 body-positive manifesto You Have the Right to Remain Fat. Virgie argued Shrill lifted the scene from her book and her TEDx talk. Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want To Talk About Race and Samantha’s friend, defended the scene she said is verified as being taped the same time Virgie’s book was made available, making the scene coincidental.

Samantha, who wrote the episode, talks about how she came up with the idea of the pool party and placing Annie in the midst of the uplifting event.

“In Chicago, I would go to dance parties, and clothing swaps, and exercise classes that were made specifically for fat women,” Samantha wrote in the Guardian article. “I thought it would be cool to see Annie seeing all different types of bodies unabashedly enjoying decadent party snacks while wearing crop tops and bikinis poolside.”

Samantha and Lindy, who both started their writing careers on blogs, are among a growing list of authors who have segued their acclaimed literary careers into the world of TV. Another example are Celeste Ng and Attica Locke, who are two of the producers behind Hulu’s new series Little Fires Everywhere, based on Celeste’s top-rated 2017 novel.