Tag: queer writers

Categories
she lit newsletter

Banning Books Could Lead to Defunding Libraries 

SHE LIT: Banning Books Could Lead to Defunding Libraries 📖

View this email in your browser

Logo
Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

Public libraries becoming targets for collections that include LGBTQ+ books

A rural Michigan town defunding its library over books featuring LGBTQ+ themes is the next level of book bans.

Book bans are at their highest level, according to the American Library Association that marks Banned Books Week every year this month. From Sept. 18-24, we will mark a year where more than ever school districts are voting to remove books from campus libraries, lawsuits are being waged to remove books from public libraries and bookstores, and now those public libraries could lose community funding over a particular book.

Patmos Library in Hudsonville, Michigan, was facing closure in early August after voters rejected a measure to renew funding for the library. The vote was blamed on a campaign waged by conservative Christians who believe books associated with LGBTQ+ themes are “grooming” children to be pedophiles, a QAnon belief that has become a mainstream conservative theory, according to media reports.

Less than 1% of Patmos Library’s books have LGBTQ+ content, the nonprofit advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State found. Yet the library was defunded.

Most book bans seem to occur within school libraries since parents have more power to address their school districts to remove books they deem inappropriate for children to read. Of course, many of these books being targeted are by LGBTQ+ authors and authors of color who write about gender, sexuality, and race.

But more of these book bans are trickling inside public libraries where individuals are heading to their city councils and court systems to request books be removed from libraries and even bookstores.

A concerned Patmos Library patron started a GoFundMe that now has raised over $255,000, which is $10,000 over the goal to help the library continue operations throughout 2023. Renowned romance novelist Nora Roberts noticed the GoFundMe after reading The Washington Post story about the library’s defunding and donated $50,000, her publicist’s blog notes. The funds are from the author personally, and not from her foundation, the blog adds.

Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir is one of the books at issue. It’s also the most banned book in America. The author and cartoonist, who uses e/eir pronouns, discusses eir discovery of eir gender identity in the graphic novel. The book was also at the center of an obscenity matter in a Virginia court that is resolved for now (more on that below).

Though Patmos Library is located in a community with a population of just less than 10,000, the possibility that a library can be defunded over the books they choose to carry is concerning. The head librarian, who identified as queer, quit amid the defunding campaign after being harassed inside the library, BuzzFeed News reports, adding other librarians had also quit for similar reasons.

Now that the library received national support to keep going, hardships still lie ahead. The harassment may continue toward the librarians, another campaign to somehow rid the library of LGBTQ+ books may be planned, or people may stop using the library.

The library’s next board meeting takes place Sept. 12, so we will see what the library has in store under the spotlight glow. Though the money will be there, its location in a community that largely wants it gone over a few books is an ongoing concern.

she lit editor + chief content creator

Check out past newsletters!

What we’re highlighting

Virginia court dismisses request to label books as obscene

The American Civil Liberties Union announced that its clients were victorious in getting an obscenity lawsuit against two books dismissed. The Circuit Court for the City of Virginia Beach rejected an effort to label Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas as obscene and illegal to sell and lend in the state.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia represented local booksellers and book organizations. Barnes & Noble was the largest target of the lawsuit. Gender Queer was the most banned book in the U.S. last year, according to the American Library Association, one of the ACLU’s clients. Legal experts believe this is just the beginning for these types of lawsuits.

Prolific YA author shares new middle grade book, film trailer

Angie Thomas, the creator of The Hate U Give, has been quite busy this week. She introduced her upcoming The Manifestor Prophecy middle grade trilogy with the first book Nic Blake and the Remarkables. In an Instagram post, she writes the roots of the book were inside her for 15 years and the story has “hellhound puppies and haints and a literal Underground Railroad. It has Black Girl Magic.” The first installment is expected to be released April 4, 2023 from HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray.

During last Sunday’s presentation of the MTV Video Music Awards, the full trailer debuted for On the Come Up, Angie’s sophomore hip-hop-infused YA novel. Directed by actress Sanaa Lathan, the film stars Jamila Gray as Bri, the prodigal daughter of a late hip-hop legend trying to find her voice in music and at school. The film will start streaming on Paramount+ on Sept. 23.

While sharing the news of her projects via social media, she also shared her concerns as a Jackson, Mississippi, native seeing the current water crisis impacting the city of 150,000 unfold. Damaged infrastructure has caused the Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves to declare a state of emergency over residents—more than 80% who are Black—having little to no water pressure.

Reese Witherspoon adds kids’ author to her bookish titles

Book club queen and book-to-screen producer Reese Witherspoon announced the upcoming release for her new children’s picture book, Busy Betty, about a girl on a mission to bathe her dog before her friends come over to play. Her book launch will take place at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville. Illustrated by Xindi Yan, the book is published by Flamingo Books under Penguin Random House and will be available for sale on Oct. 4.

Michelle Buteau’s memoir-based comedy series starts casting

Comedienne and The Circle host Michelle Buteau’s book is getting the screen treatment. Her 2020 essay collection, Survival of the Thickest, will be turned into a Netflix comedy series of the same name starring the author in a fictionalized storyline. Her character will be a plus-size, single, Black woman who is struggling as a stylist but “determined to not only survive but thrive with the support of her chosen family, a body positive attitude, and a cute v-neck with some lip gloss,” according to Deadline. Tone Bell and Tasha Smith will also star.

What we’re reviewing

"The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School" by Sonora Reyes

Book Review: The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes

What we’re reading

What we’re watching

Apply for bookish job

Want your book and bookish news to be featured? Write us at shewrites@shelit.com.

Forward this newsletter to friends!
]]> SHE LIT: Banning Books Could Lead to Defunding Libraries 📖
Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School’ by Sonora Reyes

The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes shows a Mexican American girl’s journey of realizing she’s queer and figuring out to hide her queerness at her new high school. 

We first meet Yamilet “Yami” Flores punching a mirror out of frustration over quitting her job at a café because her ex-best friend Bianca walked in. Bianca had told the student body at their high school that Yami is gay, without Yami’s approval. In fact, Yami is still trying to figure out her sexuality and her identity and only confided in Bianca. The embarrassment convinces Yami to start at a new high school, Slayton Catholic. Attending school with her younger brother Cesar, who skipped a grade so he’s a junior too, will be a fresh start for Yami, who still needs another job to help pay for tuition since her grades failed to garner a scholarship the way Cesar’s grades did. 

Right away, Yami is questioning her decision. The students at her old school are “mostly Black and Brown Chicanes,” while at Slayton 40 minutes away “there’s not a lot of melanin over there.” Yami jokes that she could sell sunscreen to her Slayton classmates to help pay for tuition. At least, she has Cesar by her side. They’re close since Mami works a lot and Papi was deported years ago back to Mexico after getting arrested at an anti-immigration protest though Yami keeps in touch with her father through phone calls, video calls, and text messages.

I put on my favorite gold hoops. They’re not real, but they look it and I like the way the gold frames my face. I feel like Selena Quintanilla. Cute and elegant at the same time. I put extra love into doing my makeup. The hoops and J’s and makeup show all the me the uniform hides. I’m ready. 

Once she gets to school, girls named Becky and Karen call her “ghetto” and ask why she’s trying to look like a “chola.” As the microaggressions continue in the school hallways, Yami meets Bo, a girl of Chinese descent who was adopted by White parents and seems to not let anything bother her as the only openly queer girl at Slayton. Yami wants to be unbothered like Bo. She befriends Bo and starts to develop romantic feelings. But Yami feels she has to squash them because she can’t let her queerness drive her out of another school. 

Yami throws herself into Mami’s Etsy homemade jewelry business to get her mind off her sexuality. Then she notices her brother acting strange. Once she finds out the double life Cesar is leading, Yami rushes to help him hide it from their mother and from their classmates. But the more she gets closer to Bo, the more Yami wants to tell someone she’s gay. She sends the text message professing her queerness, but there’s no response. The anxiety of hiding her identity overwhelms Yami as she starts collecting secrets to keep everyone around her satisfied with their assumptions of who they think she is. 

The novel does a great job of showing a timeline of a 16-year-old girl who is developing feelings for other girls but trying to figure out how to define those feelings and how to define herself. Although she has a supportive family, Yami knows her pious Catholic parents would never approve of her sexuality. And to make matters worse, she thought concealing herself among Catholic school kids would make those feelings go away, make the shame go away. But, of course, Slayton has amplified Yami’s thoughts on navigating queerness as she realizes there are more students like her also struggling with the unfortunate consequences of sharing how they feel with their friends and family. 

Changing schools because of bullying is a central issue. Sometimes, it feels like many parents may not know the full extent of why their child wants to switch schools. Here, we have Mami not only clueless about Yami’s sexuality, but she’s also sharing anti-gay sentiment that she has taken from her religion. Yami carries that fear, shame, and sadness of leaving her old school to start anew because of Bianca’s bullying. Bianca was her best friend, so even the issue of losing a close friend is emphasized in the story with Yami’s upset over Bianca resonating through the pages as she goes to a different school where we don’t see Bianca. Mami also doesn’t realize Yami quit her job over simply seeing Bianca in her workplace. The hasty decision-making many teens do eats away at Yami as she holds onto secrets upon secrets just trying to hide who she is. 

Overall, the coming-of-age debut novel with hints of romance from author Sonora Reyes who identifies as a “queer second-generation immigrant who attended a Catholic high school” shows how queer teens have several obstacles when it comes to revealing their true selves at school and at home, especially when both places are steeped in a religion that does not condone anything outside heterosexuality. The secrecy is overwhelming as people in their orbit may have some degree of stigmatizing thoughts toward the queer community. Once they reveal themselves, their safety becomes an issue, which is addressed with the fear of being kicked out of their homes or not feeling comfortable in their homes based on telling and not telling family members the truth. This story shows not only Yami jumping through hoops to hide her identity, but other characters are also avoiding the inevitable in their own ways.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Juliet Takes a Breath’ by Gabby Rivera

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera is a coming-of-age novel that has been miscategorized in the young adult genre since it focuses on a college student on an unconventional ride to self-acceptance.

Juliet Palante is discovering herself. On summer break from college, she’s at home in the Bronx about to embark on a journey to Portland, Oregon, to serve as an assistant to a feminist writer. But before she leaves, Juliet notices her sorta girlfriend Lainie has doubts about their relationship while she’s deciding how to come out to her family. She tells her family that she’s a lesbian at the dinner before her flight to Portland. The aftermath makes her look forward to Portland, where she lives with her new boss, Harlowe Brisbane. Once she’s inside Harlowe’s home, she’s quickly learning about the preference of pronouns to the range of sexuality. Where does she belong? Especially as a Latina in the very White-centered world of Portland. Her race, ethnicity, and culture intertwine with her sexual orientation as she meets young women like herself who seem so sure of who they are. 

As far as we know, this book has been banned by at least one school district. First of all, the book is about a college student. That’s the “new adult” genre that the book publishing industry barely uses. The new adult genre is supposed to be for readers between the ages of 18 to 30, but many of these books are still classified as either young adult or adult. The issue is this book has been categorized as a young adult novel, meaning it’s for youth between the ages of 12 to 18, but the material, especially to a parent or a teacher, is definitely not for that age group when it comes to literature. And the age of eighteen is overlapping between the YA and NA genres, so when the protagonist is in that age group, it gets even murkier on how the book should be marketed. 

Right off the bat, the book’s inside flap calls Juliet a “self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke.” The d-word is usually an offensive word, though it may be embraced by some lesbians like the author and the character. Harlowe writes about women’s bodies and is known around town as the “pussy book lady.” When Juliet wakes up on her first morning at Harlowe’s home, she comes face-to-face with a naked man. Harlowe reminds the naked man, her friend Phen, that he must ask Juliet if she’s OK with his nakedness. Confused, Juliet says yes. But the reader knows Juliet and any other young woman in that predicament would be uncomfortable to find a strange, naked man in the home of someone who’s supposed to be caring for them. The scene is small but can be confusing for the average maturing teenage girl who most likely was taught to stay away from naked men they do not know and depend on their supervising adult to prioritize their safety and comfort. The book has numerous parentless, college-girl adventures, which again can be viewed as inappropriate by high school administrators and parents, because that’s another life when you cross the eighteen-year age threshold and wander into the real world on your own. 

On the other end of the spectrum, there are girls, boys, and nonbinary teens who yearn to read a book like this to see how their worlds can open up after high school, either in college and/or in the real world off campus. Meeting characters like Juliet and Harlowe through the pages may inspire them to craft their own journeys like venturing off to an unknown place, exploring their identity and creativity, or looking for their communities of support that may not be visible where they are in their guardians’ home and at a high school where books featuring queer teens can be banned. 

Overall, the book is entertaining with showing the White cultural mecca Portland has become over the years and juxtaposing that setting with a queer Latina character’s Bronx-driven culture as she comes to terms with who she wants to be. 

Categories
she lit newsletter

LGBTQIA+ Books Are More Banned Than Ever

LGBTQIA+ Books Are More Banned Than Ever

*|MC:SUBJECT|*

Subscribe to the newsletter

View the original newsletter sent June 10, 2022

Logo

June is Pride Month! Join the #shelitbookclub with reading the recently banned young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 🏳️•

Why banned books are disappearing from library shelves

The most banned book in the United States right now is Maia Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer. Maia, who uses the pronouns e/em/eir, illustrates eir experience growing up in rural San Francisco Bay Area in a graphic book where e undergoes traditional gendered events from getting eir first bra to developing crushes on boys and girls.

Published by Simon & Schuster’s Oni Press in 2019, the author’s autobiographical coming-of-age story held the top spot on the most banned and challenged books list compiled by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The group says the book has been “banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images.”

Most books are banned from libraries and schools without much media fanfare, as in up to 97% of these books that are challenged will never be covered by the news. That means Americans, especially children, may never know why they can’t find a particular book at their local library.

Banned books have become a priority over the last few years since many of these works are by LGBTQIA+ authors as well as authors of color describing racial, ethnic, and cultural experiences like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas being famously banned and challenged for allegedly promoting an “anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda,” the ALA’s list notes.

I recently attended Books in Bloom, a so-called progressive book festival in Maryland, which celebrated banned books this year by adding panels with authors and experts discussing freedom of speech, including Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin and literary civil rights group PEN America. The partner indie bookstore Busboys and Poets mostly sold banned books, such as Gender Queer.

More people are taking action to support the sales of these books. Students are starting banned book clubs in their high schools. They’re even filing lawsuits against their schools for removing books. In retaliation of the increase in book censorship, Margaret Atwood modeled with a flamethrower to show off a fireproof version of her 1985 Hulu-adapted novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was auctioned off for $130,000 this week with proceeds going to PEN America.

As 2022 becomes a year of giving banned and challenged books a spotlight, the annual Banned Books Week will take place in September. That’s three months of really surveying the impact of banned and challenged books and hearing more authors speak about the freedom of speech. And maybe we’ll get more fireproof books…

she lit editor + chief content creator

Subscribe to the she lit newsletter!

What we’re highlighting

June book club picks promise addictive summer reads

Oprah’s Book Club has chosen Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. The debut novel centers on a young woman in Oakland who starts working on the streets at night to keep up with rising rent and the costs to support her family. But when she gets picked up by the police one night, she finds herself fighting to protect her freedom. The 19-year-old author, who’s also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, will sit down with Oprah in a livestream conversation June 30 on Oprah Daily.

Reese’s Book Club is reading Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen. Jenna’s Book Club is reading These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany. GMA Book Club is reading More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez. Noname Book Club is reading The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

Best-selling memoirist gets spotlight in food docuseries

Coming off of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, you can catch the HBO Max docuseries Take Out with Lisa Ling about the stories of how Asian communities weaved their cuisines into the fabric of America. One episode follows Michelle Zauner aka indie recording artist Japanese Breakfast as she ventures the aisles of the Korean grocery chain H Mart and talks about her award-winning book Crying in H Mart

What we’re reviewing

What we’re reading

What we’re watching

What’s lit around the web

The Rise in Book Bans, Explained

He Wrote a Children’s Book About a Magic Wig — and Got Pulled Into a Far Right Culture War

LeVar Burton Calls ‘Bulls- -t’ on Recent School Book Bans: ‘It’s Embarrassing’

Apply for bookish job

How to be featured

Are you a book publisher who wants to share upcoming and new works by women?

Are you an author who wants your book highlighted?

Write us at shewrites [at] shelit [dot] com.

Forward the she lit newsletter to friends!

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters explores the complexities of parenthood between two women and a man who unite in an effort to take care of a baby, but the closer they get, the more they convince themselves they’re making a mistake. 

Reese always wanted to be a mother. In fact, she acts as a mother figure in the New York City transgender community, taking in young trans women who remind her of herself when she first came to the city from the Midwest. Upon her arrival, she quickly became a go-to caretaker for children on the Upper East Side. She has the natural gift of taking care of others. One of the trans women she had taken under her wing was Amy, who returns in her life in a form she’s unfamiliar with. 

Ames is a marketing executive having a sultry fling with his recently divorced boss, Katrina. They soon realize they are expecting a baby. Katrina had a miscarriage during her marriage, so she’s nervous about the pregnancy. She’s also at the top of her game at work, and she’s unsure how a baby she’s having with a subordinate fits into her career plan post-divorce. Ames can’t believe he even impregnated a woman, but now that he has, he suggests bringing in an old friend to help parent the baby. 

When Reese sees Amy again, Amy is now known as Ames. Amy detransitioned from a trans woman back to a biological man. Ames explains how he thought years of taking hormones to live as a female would decrease his fertility. But now that a baby is coming, Ames wants to tap Reese to be a secondary mother and assist Katrina to raise the child. Reese always wanted to be a mother, and she feels her chances were dashed when she and Amy broke up. Now, who Reese still can’t believe is the Amy she used to love is offering the opportunity of motherhood.

Skeptical of the idea of becoming a mother by playing a third parent in raising another woman’s baby, Reese starts hanging out with Ames and Katrina to see if she can get onboard with the proposal. Katrina has questions and misconceptions of how Reese lives as a trans woman and how Ames lived as a trans woman. The clashes melt away once Reese and Katrina realize they are simply women who want to be mothers. It takes a village to raise a child. But when Katrina realizes why Reese and Amy broke up, she starts to rethink the concept of letting Reese play a mother and herself become a mother.

This is an eye-opening novel exploring a part of the New York City trans community rarely seen in mainstream media. Reports say that this book is one of the firsts written by a trans author to be distributed by a “big five” publisher. It’s refreshing to learn about how these fictional trans women feel they are competing with biological women to demonstrate their femaleness, including their capability and desire to become mothers. The author, who is a trans woman, spent time in the community to nail down the intricacies of the characters, their backgrounds, and their desires. 

The spectrum of characters represent different people who interact in the community. There is the trans person, the former trans person, and the cisgender, heterosexual person fighting their biases to accept someone they actually meet in real life who is trans. For Reese, her sex life is complicated with having committed lovers and secret lovers. The emotional struggle of identifying as female in a world that deidentifies her as not female makes her feel like she could never commit to a monogamous relationship long enough to raise a child with someone. For Ames, he detransitions soon after ending his relationship with Reese but still struggles on pinpointing what made him want to live as male again, especially when Reese pushes for answers. For Katrina, she is wrapping her brain around the fact she is having a baby with someone she didn’t know had lived as a woman for years, but her open-mindedness forces her to shake the anger and accept the perceived affection she’s receiving from Ames and now Reese. 

Overall, this novel again shows a community rarely magnified in the literary world. Pushing the boundaries that women who have penises also have desires to be mothers, and though it could be difficult to produce that child biologically depending on the partner, they will make a way to be mothers. Humankind, regardless of identities and circumstances, wants love, and this story shows the road for these characters finding that love unexpectedly with each other, though their inner demons try to destroy what they have. By the way, a TV series adaptation is in the works.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Red at the Bone’ by Jacqueline Woodson

…she had to take slow breaths to calm herself. She felt red at the bone―like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding.

“Red at the Bone” by Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of three generations of two families united by an unexpected pregnancy. The poetic flow distracts the reader from the disorganization of each characters’ stories, but it’s an effortless read that creates a memorable world between the characters and their situations.

The story opens up to Melody, on her sixteenth birthday, wearing her mother’s dress at her party. Her mother, Iris, never wore it because, at that tender age, she and her boyfriend Aubrey discover they will be having baby Melody. The pages go through the growing pains of their parents—Iris’ Spelhouse-coupled mother and father and Aubrey’s single mother—stretching beyond their limits to accept the baby. Then we see how Iris and Aubrey grow apart with Aubrey raising Melody and Iris heading off to college to start over. Iris and Aubrey have to decide on how they want to live their lives after having Melody and maturing into adulthood.

The author does a great job of chopping up the story in digestible pieces with short chapters and very short paragraphs but simultaneously making the character’s mark known without starting with his/her name. The story grows yet it picks up in various places with Iris, for example, in college then the next succeeding chapter can be her back in time dealing with her pregnancy or even before Melody.

It’s a nice and succinct read that incorporates black culture like Iris’ parents graduating from Spelman College and Morehouse College and history with her great-grandmother surviving the Tulsa race massacre. The story takes place in the not-so-distant past in 2001 New York City. Overall, the book covers a lot of ground chronicling a family that comes together for a child.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘A Song For You’ by Robyn Crawford


A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A Song For You” by Robyn Crawford is an honest memoir about the friend of pop superstar Whitney Houston who felt like she had to be quiet in the past out of respect and privacy, but she decides her side of the story is valuable.

Robyn tells her story. There has been backlash about Robyn, who became a backdropped friend of Whitney, due to the media overemphasizing their alleged romantic ties to Whitney’s family publicly showing disdain for Robyn and her relationship with Whitney. With Whitney being gone now seven years, it may seem like poor taste that Robyn wrote a book on her friendship with Whitney, but it’s more about her years working in Whitney’s camp, trying to protect her friend at every corner, but also losing herself in someone else’s dream and rediscovering her purpose.

The story starts with how Robyn meets Whitney at summer camp in New Jersey. She says Whitney introduces herself as a singer and is already a teen model. They begin to hang out a lot as Whitney soon becomes discovered as a singer, signing with Clive Davis at Arista Records. Robyn, who’s a college basketball standout, is thrust into the music industry, but the rumors of her and Whitney having a romance start early. Years go by as Robyn stays beside Whitney to make sure her business interests are met, but at home her brother and mother are diagnosed with AIDS while her sister is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Robyn describes her interactions with Whitney’s husband Bobby Brown and other family members as unpleasant. Whitney’s marriage and drug addiction soon builds a rift between Whitney and Robyn, and in 1999 Robyn leaves Arista and the music industry behind. How Robyn’s life unfolds as she tries to find what she wants to do and what makes her happy as she approaches forty is intriguing.

Overall, as a memoir of a person who is known for being in the shadow of a superstar, Robyn does a great job of focusing the story on herself and describing what she had witnessed. This is not always the case for similar memoirs like Jessica Harris’ My Soul Looks Back, where that author gets lost in focusing on the famous people instead of herself. Robyn feeling comfortable to tell her side of the story is commendable, as she says she wasn’t interested for years until she felt Whitney’s legacy was marred by drug addiction and molestation rumors despite her extraordinary talent. Robyn’s book is more to support Whitney’s legacy while the author exhibits her right to tell her own story.

View all my reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘We Are Never Meeting In Real Life’ by Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting In Real LifeWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” by Samantha Irby is a hilarious collection of biographical essays that tell the craziest situations in the most verbose way.

Samantha is from the Chicago area and still lives there, so the first chapter is about how she’s never leaving her hometown, with adding that she still sees an elementary school teacher when she gets coffee. The title is an ode to her telling you everything, and being comfortable with that. She goes from her childhood, including her troubled family background; college, where she dropped out; liking men then liking women; adopting a sassy cat (probably similar to the cat on the cover); her irritable bowel syndrome (it does get gross); staying in the same assistant job for 15 years. The chapters that really stand out are the ones around her cat and her father.

The cat, named Helen Keller, gives her trouble the entire time, but the dialogue she puts in the cat’s mouth is funny. It’s like they’re constantly at war, and Samantha only got stuck with the cat because of her job at a veterinarian office.

Samantha doesn’t mention her late mother as much, but she mentions her late father a lot. She talks about her father, who was an alcoholic who would go missing days at a time and when he was home would bring illegal trouble into the home. Though she goes into detail about the unstable upbringing, it’s still in this upbeat, comedic tone. That’s what shines in this book is looking at life’s moments and having a sense of humor about it by describing every situation in the most exaggerated detail.

This book is great when you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up. It’s the great comedic memoir you might be looking for if you’re open to reading about a black woman’s journey. Plus, she reads the audiobook in her awkwardly funny tone.

View all my reviews