I picked this up because I want to read more nonfiction and fiction written by Black authors, specifically women. I was familiar with her general writing style from twitter, and I knew she was a professor of sociology, but I was really blown away by this collection of essays. One of them that stuck with me was about her relationship to the word beautiful, and her knowledge that she wasn't beautiful, and how mad it makes people to hear her say that. She's either denying the possibility of a Black woman being beautiful by not acknowledging her own beauty, or unable to see it. But she takes the larger view of that kind of term, and contextualizes it as the exclusionary concept that it is. There is an understood definition of beauty in this culture, and if you are outside of it (and specifically, if you are dark-skinned), then you will never truly reach it. There's no pithy answer to this, either; the lesson is not that our beauty is inside us, or that it's only through not participating that you can be free. It is simply an acknowledgement of something that culture spends a lot of time denying exists at all.
Most of the essays have this clarity of vision between the societal and the personal, and it made me remember why I loved my sociology courses in college, and wish very much that I could take a class taught by her. It's wonderful writing and her point of view is sharp and clear and I am grateful for it.
Grade: A
Most of the essays have this clarity of vision between the societal and the personal, and it made me remember why I loved my sociology courses in college, and wish very much that I could take a class taught by her. It's wonderful writing and her point of view is sharp and clear and I am grateful for it.
Grade: A
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