Ruminations on life, love, and lesbian subcultures.
In her first book-length nonfiction (her work also appears in Out magazine and online at LesbiaNation.com), novelist Williams (Girl Walking Backwards, 1998) starts with her drive to a nightclub holding a Trash Disco Night. The goings-on are appropriately depraved and less than logical, peripherally involving Williams’s non-obsessive non-relationship with a gorgeous submissive named Anikka. The text moves on to other topics, but in a sense never quite leaves the nightclub. Like most members of her early-30s generation, the writer is impressively grounded in pop and underground culture; the highlight here is her visit to Ladyfest, a riotgrrl music/political awareness festival in Olympia, Washington. Wandering among the testy mix of young hippie women and overly fashion-conscious punk chicks, Williams gets antsy at just how hard it is to get laid in this achingly PC landscape: “The phrase ‘identity politics’ makes me want to become a heroin addict. I have dents in my wall from hurling books by bell hooks.” There’s a lot more in that vein: slashing attacks on the stifling attitudes of her lesbian nation that are yet leavened with a desperate, passionate love. (Perhaps you can only truly critique what you adore.) The author’s intelligent, self-deprecating manner allows her to pull off pretty much anything, from reflecting on her relationship with a teenaged girl—oh-so-improper, she knows—to rhapsodizing about the wrestling parties she hosts for her friends involving a real wrestling mat and lots of vegetable oil.
Somewhere in the midst of all the post-slacker knocking about, Williams comes up with a smart, breezy chronicle about a smart, breezy woman who’s game for just about anything and has something sharp to say all the time.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55583-785-9
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Alyson
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | LGBTQ
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
12
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The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Not an easy read but an essential one.
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Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke.
In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it—e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.
Not an easy read but an essential one.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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