2 stars
This book was okay. I don’t really know much about Issa Rae or her humor, but with blurbs like “You’ll laugh freakishly hard” and “A book ripe with insights” (also pretty sure the phrase you’re looking for is “rife with”) right on the cover, I was expecting more from this. I’m not sure if I just didn’t “get” her humor, but I didn’t really find this book funny.
There were parts I enjoyed such as the sections on hair and her complaint of being expected to make everything about race all the time. However, much of the book was rather dull. Not a lot of humor or insight in it.
One of the big problems I had were the sections on food and eating. Issa Rae clearly has an unhealthy relationship with food and it really comes out in a weird way in the book. I was expecting her to overcome the issues at some point or at least become aware of them, but her anti-fat attitudes are pretty consistent in the book. The promotion of unhealthy diets and odd phrases like “perfectly bulimic finger” just weren’t for me. I also thought the section on PDA was weird. I, myself, am not a huge fan of PDA, but her whining about PDA because her parents/family didn’t show physical affection/say “I love you” often came off as very self-centered and immature. Again, seemed like she had unhealthy ideas that weren’t addressed.
I found most of the book pretty boring, filled with not very interesting relationship stories and rants about bad coworkers. Might be relatable to some, but I found it dry and uninteresting.