“But if I’ve learned anything it’s that I don’t want to be consumed. I have teeth of my own”

Sugar, baby tells the coming of age story of Agnes a mixed race 21 year old who’s headed nowhere fast. She lives at home with her extremely religious mother who she also cleans houses with for a living. She yearns for something more than the small town she comes from. She has a chance meeting with Emily, the daughter of one of her clients and becomes enthralled in her world. Emily is a model and a sugar baby and lives the decadent life Agnes can only dream about. After she gets caught in a lie her mother kicks her out of the house and she moves in with Emily and her other model/sugar baby friends. She gets swept up in their lifestyle, but these women are all wealthy and can afford to fail Agnes cannot. Thrown from relationship to relationship Agnes sees if she has what it takes to live the life of a sugar baby. She quickly learns it’s just as isolated as life was before. 

This read hit very close to home for me so I took it in slow bites. Reading this book was like holding a mirror up to my own face and staring at my reflection for far too long. I grew up in the same religiously controlled household that Agnes did. I wasn’t allowed to watch certain television shows or listen to certain music as they were signs of the devil. I too had “The End Times” trauma drilled into my head. No one could hurt me like my mother could and no one could shame me like she could. She had god on her side. I know what it’s like to find the escape of drugs, sex and alcohol as an attempt at healing. I know what it’s like to live your life in the male gaze for so long that you eventually go mad and take your body back. Thinking you need constant validation only to discover you’ve held the key to that all along. Agnes journey is a bit more extreme than my own but it’s not without its parallels.