theliteraryteapot's Reviews (314)

Beautiful cover.

I'll preface this by saying that the marketing is weird. The book is compared to Bridget Jones, and yes, the main character is realistically flawed but it was not a cute contemporary story. It was not funny, at all. This is a book about Queenie, a black woman, making bad decisions that lead her to being so so badly treated by white men mainly through sex. This is about trauma and a woman who's mental health is completely deteriorating.

Queenie's character development was definitely the best thing coming out of it. At first, she appeared to me as a character lacking personality and she was frustrating by making so many mistakes. She said she was the funniest person she knew and no she was not. She didn't seem to have a genuine relationship with her friends. Said friends, although they did warn Queenie of her bad decisions, they didn't exactly go out of their way to protect her or call her out (except for Cassandra but in a harsh way). Yes, Queenie's a grown woman but if you see your friend being such a self-destructive mess, maybe you should do something?
Anyways, by the time I reached half of the book, I realised that Queenie lacking personality wasn't due to bad writing, it's just that she was completely lost. She was losing herself, had very low self-esteem and didn't believe she deserved love. And honestly her story is actually quite relatable. It's quite easy to judge her but really, she had unresolved trauma, not that helpful friends (imo), and other issues. You end up rooting for Queenie because you want her to get help.
Although the first part of the book wasn't much focusing on Queenie's interest to study and cover the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK, she tried to work on it several times throughout the book (her annoying boss just wouldn't let her and that was frustrating). She remembered why she wanted that job in the first place and how important it is to focus on something you are passionate about. Obviously, as a white woman, I cannot speak on the representation of a black woman nor on her struggles.
The last part was the most interesting for me and I wish the author would have spent more time developing Queenie's journey to get better, more scenes where she went to therapy. It felt a bit rushed and kind of like trauma-dumping (which can happen when you have so much issues and you finally go see a therapist years later).

I appreciated the author's writing but thought there was perhaps a lot of dialogue, compared to less of a deep dive in Queenie's thoughts (process)? But again, I felt that mostly during the first part.
Now, I read a French translated edition. To the French editor(s), do a better job!! By the third of the book, it felt like you were sick of it and just didn't work enough on it: words were missing, others were repeated, some sentences didn't make sense? Why do books written by marginalised authors and/or with marginalised characters keep being sabotaged like that by the French publishing industry...

I didn't like it but I don't hate it either. The idea sounds interesting though: a young woman who copes with her depression by sleeping it away, for a whole year. I thought the book gave a quite accurate depiction of what a depressive disorder can look like; It's not cute, not an aesthetic, not a personnality trait. It can be messy and ugly. It ruins lives.
I had depression for several years and on some days I could take several naps a day and sleep for about 12 to 15 hours in total in a day. This was due to chronic fatigue as well as the need to escape the thoughts I was dealing with.

Now the thing is, it's so hard to care about the main character. A very privileged rich, white, straight, young woman... Add to that she is rude, especially mean to her only friend, and racist. Am I supposed to care? I really don't. Perhaps the writing can compensate a little, but the story quickly gets boring, annoying and repetitive. 300 pages for this story is a bit long. I also wish I could delete from my brain those flashback sex scenes with her asshole of an ex boyfriend wtf. And I thought the ending was underwhelming.

Audre Lorde is one of my favourite poets. I came across her work through university, through an introduction to academic research class during my Bachelor's degree, as I was studying Black feminism. I later decided to write my first master thesis on sapphic poetry studying again Audre Lorde. I am full of admiration of who this person was. She had such a way with words and was such a strong and inspiring woman. She had a lot to say, she needed to let her anger out while still being hopeful.

I believe her essays are definitely important pieces in feminist theories and movements. With Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde became one of the precursors for the concept of intersectionality. She talks about facing racism within feminist groups, misogyny within Black groups, homophobia within both. For instance, how white women will only focus on their oppression as women while not taking into account social class, age, race and sexual orientation differences.
 Some of her sentences made me reflect on certain things: on the existence of sorority, on how oppressed groups always have to educate the oppressors, on the use of poetry, on the non-constructive discussions within oppressed groups in which "who is poorer than who, who is more Black than who" (kind of like when people on twitter talked about the dangers of those Olympic games of oppressed groups).

Audre Lorde and her work deserve and need to be studied, not only in the USA but in other countries as well. Here are my favourite essays: "Poetry Is Not a Luxury", "Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface", "Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference" and "Learning from the 60's".

I liked it but not as much as I thought I would. It's important to tell these stories and if it helps even just one person then the job is done, as the author said in the epilogue. Also it's young adult and the writing is very accessible. Be aware that there are many trigger warnings as the book tells about the traumas the author went through; trauma after trauma after trauma. So I can't say it's a pleasant read, it's sad and depressing. But this story matters and deserves to be heard.

I'll only add that I read a French translation and the French publishing house really need to do a better job because this translation lacked professionalism: missing words, weird sentences that seemed to be translated from google translate or deepl, lack of proof-reading and corrections from the editor... So annoying and preventing from enjoying reading the book. Also, not sure who the translator is but since there are frequent use of slurs, maybe go for an ownvoice translation? (something that I talked about with a publisher last year and how it was important, so that means /some/ publishers in French-speaking countries can and make the effort).