I have complex feelings about this. On one hand, the prose work is to my liking and done well, the characters are pretty organic, there are multiple, really interesting esoteric experiences from the perspectives of Nigerian immigrants in both the UK and the U.S, and it’s just easy reading, despite the length.

On the other hand, when you read something with such a nuanced portrayal of a female experience, especially around political and social thought of black people living in America versus the main characters other perspective, as a black woman in America who moved there, but it also a self avowed Terf, it boggles the mind, a bit. There is such a breadth of female experiences, to get stuck on the notion that a trans woman somehow has an entirely different experience that they aren’t “women”, it just constantly had me taken out of the fiction.

Mostly, I think it happened often because it attempts a self-identified mixture of goals, which the book breaks the fourth wall with a discussion between women saying that books written by marginalized authors are pigeon holed into books that teach the reader something, and get blasted for it, and books that are so nuanced that it’s not prescriptive and the reader takes away from it what they want, but it’s still About the same topics. That’s very true, especially with fiction produced by immigrants, even more so in Canada’s silo of publishing at the moment. But the book pointing to the fact that it’s attempting to both doesn’t actually solve the problem that that is what it’s trying to do. It is very prescriptive often, telling you about a certain topic and then having a blog post about the topic stating why you should think similarly. And then transitions back again into a fiction mostly putting together characters and situations that showcase the social and political inability to detach from “issues”, as republications call them, but are lived experiences of marginalized people.

Had it not been prescriptive it might have actually felt more organic than this end product. And then, at the end, I was constantly taken out of the fiction at these points, many of which I do agree with, to think to myself, how can someone who is being so prescriptive about these topics, still be so morally compromised and wrong about trans people? So, really, I’m sure my knowing things about the author influenced my reading of the book. And, had I not already owned it and had some friends not wanted to read it together, I would probably have never picked it up, knowing she’s a Terf.

As solid as this book is, probably 3.5-4 star read, I just don’t want to assign it any kind of value. Which is interesting to me, because I did rate the Harry Potter books, having owned them for some time, and been able to consume them with some enjoyment as with this one—but then again, those books aren’t centered around the reader taking away prescriptive conclusions about marginalized people, while the reader knows the writer believes in withholding rights to another group of marginalized people.