This is the third nonfiction book I've read by a WOC this year (black woman to be specific) and I'm so glad to be hearing these new voices and growing in understanding of a life experience I am not closely familiar with. So This Will Be My Undoing was a deliberate pick by me to do better, to be more aware and to really just appreciate the story of someone who I might otherwise never had heard from.I loved Morgan's essay which explored living in Harlem and what Harlem meant and how she saw it. I loved thinking about spaces outside of a white gaze. I am accustomed to looking at culture through my own white lens. My own (flawed and often unconscious) judgments are based on the white norms I have accepted and reinforced. The ways in which I expect people to ask, the conformity I expect them to accept is based on expectations that have their origin in white supremacy. Maybe the first step of allyship is to really listen to the stories of POC and specifically WOC and specifically black women. I'm there. I'm doing that part. And now it feels not quite enough. Like this is the baseline. This is the absolute minimum. Morgan talks about going to Japan as a middle school and then undergrad student. And during that time there she would walk into a store and the attentive sales people would help her and ask if she needed anything. This was such a mind blowing experience that she couldn't wait to see her own mother experience it as well. Wait, back up. Yep, that's what I wrote. This brilliant, beautiful, multi-lingual woman was feeling truly seen, by a sales clerk. Shit, America we are doing something dreadfully wrong if we can't even up our game to baseline dignity and respect for women of color by saying hello and asking if they need help when they enter our shops. Phoebe Robinson told a similar story about going to a Michael's store and standing at the framing counter waiting to be helped. (You can read my review of Phoebe's book, You Can't Touch My Hair here). She wasn't even acknowledged and several other customers walked in later and were helped in front of her. So, yes. This is a problem. This is a embarrassing basic problem. We need to not only see WOC, but we need to allow them to take up whatever space they need AND be fine with it.
4/5 Stars.
I really needed this book after a lot of heavy reading in January. It was full of really honest critiques but also funny. I listened to this as an audio book, which based on how it unfurled, might be the only way to really digest this book. You Can't Touch My Hair (YCTMH) comes through in a series of essays by Phoebe Robinson, one of two women who make up the podcast duo of Two Dope Queens. Phoebe has been a writer, standup comedian, and actress and is still making her way in the entertainment business. I gather from the book that the book deal came after the popular success of a blog, Blaria (Black Daria), but I've never read the blog before.Robinson is a few years younger than me, so her pop culture references were on the periphery of my own experience, but still close enough that I understood them. Glad I didn't waste time watching The Kingsmen even though I love Colin Firth. Listening to the book was a bit like spending an extended period of time with a Millennial. As a gen-x type I got a little tired of the constant voice modulations prevalent in the young, but that's probably spot on generation-wise. I digress. I've spent time this past year consciously trying to make an effort to listen to more voices that aren't like mine, specifically cis, het, college educated, white woman. My echo chamber is deep and wide after almost ten years of college and post-graduate education. So listening to Robinson's book was not only entertaining because of the jokes, but also interesting because of the different perspective Robinson brings as a black woman.In the end, I felt the book ran a little long. I feel like there was quite a bit of material added for the audiobook that may not have appeared in print, and in the end it felt a little repetitive, but YCTMH still made me laugh. I actually spit coffee out in my car when she referred to Craig's List as Lucifer's Taint.
That's back to back Robinson books for me (Michelle Robinson aka Michelle Obama and Phoebe Robinson). What should I read next?
3/5 Stars.
"... sameness breeds more sameness, until you make a thoughtful effort to counteract it."
What can I possibly say about Michelle Obama that hasn't been said before? Becoming is the telling of her story - well known to those who care to know it. She grew up on the lower end of middle class on Chicago's south side, in a neighborhood on a downward slide amid white flight to the suburbs. She was supported by two loving parents who pushed hard for her education and was accepted at the Whitney Young Magnet School in downtown Chicago. From there she went to Princeton, a school at which high school counselor had told her she did not belong. Then she continued on to Harvard Law School, accepted off the wait list. From there she was hired as an associate at Sidley Austin, a large law firm in Chicago and where she met summer associate, Barack Obama, serving as his advisor at the firm.
Michelle grew tired of the law firm grind, wanting to do more with her life. She left there for a job at the City, working with Valerie Jarrett. Then on to a non-profit creating mentoring programs for young underprivileged people - connecting young people with promise, but not opportunity - with non-profits in need of talent and tenacity. By the time her husband was a United States Senator, Michelle was working as an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Her mission? Helping the Medical Center and University make an impact in the south side neighborhood where it provided little opportunity and no tax base for the surrounding citizens.
I'm aware of the things that are said about Michelle. That she only cares about money. If that was the case she could have stayed as a high-powered Sidley attorney making a hefty mid-six figure summary. That she hates America. Which in itself is a ridiculous thing to throw at someone, but in any case, would a person who hates this country give so much back to it? Focus signature programs and dedicate her professional life prior to becoming a public figure to bettering America's most needy communities?
This well-educated, eloquent, smart, funny, deep, and thoughtful human being made her signature policy in the White House a focus on the growing childhood obesity epidemic and ways to combat that through exercise and nutrition. That's right. She asked parents, schools, restaurants, manufacturers, and corporations to make better decisions for children's health.
And people hate her for it.
I don't know how she could have put up with it. I don't know why anyone would want to. But she did. And she opened the White House up to vast numbers of "regular" Americans. She visited wounded service members at Walter Reed Medical Center. She gave commencement speeches at universities and high schools who could hardly believe their fortune in snagging such a high profile speaker.
She cared about all Americans. Black Americans. Brown Americans. Poor Americans. Veterans. Groups that are marginalized and overlooked. She noted where our country, through policy, negligence, malice, or ignorance, failed these groups.
And people hate her for it.
So yeah, I know she doesn't need my defense. Because Michelle is doing just fine on her own. But sometimes I look at the headlines and the vitriol spewed in the comments section of social media (I know, I know, I need to not read them) and I think about whether I am doing enough to reflect the country as I think it is or could be. And in that I feel a real kinship with Michelle Obama and the causes she's committed her life to and the way she's chosen to live her life.
The question is: “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
5/5 Stars.
