Editor Khan and other British or Britishish Muslim women share knowledge and experiences living while Muslim. The contributors hold a range of racial and sexuality identities and write in different styles. I prefer personal narratives, which comprise probably half (or more?) of the entries.

My savior box was ticked with these sentences from Mona Eltahawy in "Too Loud, Swears Too Much and Goes Too Far"

When I was nineteen, I finally found, among the books and journals in the library of the university I attended in Jeddah, the word--feminism--that would give me a way to fight back. Feminism saved my mind. There was no women's or gender studies department at the university, so I imagined a renegade librarian or professor had put those books and journals there.

She also writes

Revolutions "go too far": if your community is ready for you, then you are too late.

We have our orders!

Coco Khan's entry "Immodesty Is the Best Policy" is funny.

I am curious what happens on these platforms [online matrimonial sites], imagining an ocean of aunties writing slightly insulting profiles of their daughters and nieces. I can see Auntie B's listing for me: "Looking for a man to bring wayward niece back to the light. She cannot cook, likes to argue and could be slimmer."

And here's a fun fact from Sufiya Ahmed in "The First Feminist"

the person credited for founding the first degree-awarding educational institution in the world, the in Fes, Morocco, in the year 859, was a Muslim woman."

And a funny because it's true

Islam sees women as practical in matters of divorce; we think deeply before leaving a man. Men can be hot-headed. Women, less so.

Disclosure: I know the author. I've read dozens of her zines, but I still had no idea what an excellent fiction writer she is. This review is not inflated by my acquaintanceship with Davida, but you should know that we've met in person at least once.

Disclosure: it's harder to write reviews about books you love than books you feel meh about or hate.

When we first meet her, Michelle is a 33-year-old medical billing administrator working in Atlanta under the name Anne, a misspelling of her middle name. Most of the book takes place when Michelle, or Chelle, is in her junior and senior year of high school, in the thrall of Sissy, a rich girl with secrets. Michelle, on the other hand, lives in a trailer with her widowed mother and (half) brother, Michael. Later Morrison joins their clique. Morrison (named after Jim, by his teenaged mother), father unknown, lives in a worse trailer and also has a secret.

Through her first-person narrative we discover Michelle's troubles and insecurities in real time, as well as from the perspective of her hollow adult self. Everyone in the story is fragile, and everyone can do damage, to such an extent that there's a current of cruel empathy around it.

Disclosure: I borrowed the book in print from NYPL and dogeared a number of pages, so I could share some passages with you. I am terrible.

Most of the kids at school identified with something -- sports, movies, clothes, or music. They built identities around teams, actors, brands, and bands. I loved television, but that was somehow different, maybe because it was free. You didn't have to make an effort to watch TV. There was no street cred in having never missed an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. No one cared that you knew who voiced Charlie. My identity was built around a fuzzy UHF signal.

UHF, dear blob, that's an unreliable thing to develop your reputation with!

Towards the end, the secrets start to be revealed and related to Michelle's true identity story--the ignominious, but devastating death of her father when Michelle was 8. The calamities in Michelle's life stem from lies and manipulations that could have been harmless longterm. I liked how that revelation dawned on me simultaneous with the revelations in the book, so I was getting it as the same time as Michelle.

There's also a crack about Florida (in)justice that I won't tell you because it's a spoiler, but lol, and then the way things come together after the brush with the law is heartwarming.

me--bookish and poor and surly and Brown

is how Sánchez describes herself in the memoir's introduction. These are qualities that interest me in a writer (and as a friend [a:Celia C. Pérez|9838714|Celia C. Pérez|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] lol). The author of [b:I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter|29010395|I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter|Erika L. Sánchez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503003220l/29010395._SY75_.jpg|49254602] and a book (or two?) of poetry recounts her upbringing, depression, and good & bad choices with a nakedness that is masked only by potty-mouthed bravado. It really is surprising and fun that Sánchez's voice is so sassy--except when she's in a deep depression. That essay's language is the least adorned.

An example of the wicked-tongued essays

White supremacy is funny because it is stupid; it makes no goddamn sense. Basically, you're telling me that Stephen Miller is genetically superior to me? That bitch looks like a gland.

Descriptive! Accurate!

Further

If , for instance, I can't make fun of the Duggar mom's sloppy Republican vagina, I don't want to be a part of your movement.

I'm confident Emma Goldman would have agreed.

Sometimes she doesn't release her trenchant hot takes, so they probably burn her instead of the guilty parties.

Sometimes the locals laughed at my Spanish as if I were some sort of yokel. When I explained that I was Mexican American, Spaniards were often perplexed. How could I be both? they wondered. And why did I have a strange accent? I had trouble understanding what was so hard to understand. What I wanted to say was "Your people savagely colonized the New World, thus birthing mestizos in the land that became Mexico; then, hundreds of years later, thanks to neoliberalism and corruption, these Mexicans, searching for work, immigrated to the United States, where they are exploited for their labor and treated like animals. I am the daughter of these immigrants, which is why my accent isn't entirely Mexican. I struggled my way through college and now here I am on a fancy scholarship."

And sometimes a guilty party who doesn't mind being called out, but also isn't going to change their ways>

One afternoon my cat unearthed a used condom from under my bed. As I stared at it in the middle of the living room, I realized I wasn't sure who it had belonged to. I was slut-shamed by my cat.

Okay, so I have a bunch more passages highlighted, but I'm not going to share them all. Here's one that aches with truth, though

It's hard to date men when you hate men.

I also appreciate her telling of how having an abortion saved her and her future family's lives, how being forced to give birth when you're suicidal isn't good for anyone. And finally, the deeply relatable

All I've ever wanted was to feel alive.

I decided to give audiobooks another whirl after dropping the first one I read almost immediately. I think it's good to listen to author narrated "productions," especially when the writer is a performer. As much as I enjoy the dish, I often find fault with actor/comic authored works because they feel so transparently for the money and/or attention. I'm confident I would have enjoyed Have I Told You This Already? far less if I'd read it. I might not have finished it, but listening, I took pleasure in having Lauren Graham, who is my age, in my ear while I walked some of the same streets she described now and again. Though most of her essays take place in LA, where Graham has lived for most of her adult life (her first roommate there was Connie Britton!), she does end the collection with "New York Is a Person."

Anyway, the essays tell of her life before and during and maybe a bit after her successful acting career--she's now acting and sometimes directing The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, which I imagine leads to a different kind of fame than Graham enjoyed while on The Gilmore Girls and Parenthood. While there are self-conscious references to needing to finish the book and essays that are pure filler, it's still a solid listen.

You know I love Brother Buddha, but until he reincarnates as a black man in America, I think we better go with what we know.