I didn't know that I knew who Franchesca Ramsey was. She started as a YouTube celebrity, and she hit the big time with a couple of viral videos, one being Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls. If you were active on the internet and social media in 2012 you saw it or knew about it. She was also a writer and correspondent on the Larry Wilmore show and was on Broad City.

Ramsey calls herself and "accidental activist," but I feel like she's too hardcore and prepared to be accidental. In her chapter about calling people out, she pulls out some tight social science: Kevin Munger's Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: Experimentally Reducing Racist Harassment study that showed that "people are more receptive to criticism when it comes from someone who looks like them (lmk if you want a copy of this paywalled article).

Munger began to search particular racial slurs on Twitter. Switching off between Gregs and Rasheeds [names of Twitter bots], he responded to users who had a history of racist harassment with the same message:

@[racist person] Hey man, just remember that there are real people who are hurt when you harass them with that kind of language.

Ramsey had a run as a caller outer and was also viciously trolled (presumably still is). She writes that discovering the quotation, "Be who you needed when you were younger" had a powerful impact on her "work across comedy, social justice, and beauty." This wisdom comes in her chapter on Black women and natural hair, or you might want to say Black girls and natural hair, as it's a bit of a personal hair history, as well as a thoughtful piece on hair empowerment for Black people in modern times, per this example:

In 2017, two sixteen-year-old twin sisters at a charter school in Massachusetts were told their braided hair extensions were 'distracting' and in violation of the dress code. When they refused to 'fix' their hair, they were banned from extracurriculars and prom and threatened with suspension.

I love a person who can separate legitimate anger from gratuitous viciousness, usually regarding a person's body. Ramsey, like a lot of people, found fault with Lena Dunham hand shared it on Twitter. She didn't come out and say "P.S. You're fat," but she skirted around it. Upon being seated next to Dunham at a party, she came clean, with Dunham and herself and took physical insults out of her comedy. I would like all comedians, including some of the political comics I love most (looking at you, Samantha Bee), would follow suit.

I borrowed her book despite not knowing who exactly she was because I like social/political/comic essay. Except I forgot that I often get tired of them after a while. Ramsey and her book are topical, funny, and smart--three of the things I want in a book. I just found her essays were repetitive. I'm hard on comedian essays, though, so you'll probably want to stick with it. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

I got more out of this book than I expected to. I've read a few gymnast memoirs, and they're not usually especially weighty or detailed. Fierce came out the year after Raisman's triumph at her second Olympics--winning the silver medal in the all-around (which as good as anyone other than Simone Biles could hope for) along with a team gold and an event silver (Biles again earning the gold). I don't know if the books quality is due to Raisman being in her twenties when her book was written, that she had a better ghost writer than others, or because she herself is more writerly than others, despite her only post-secondary education being a year at a business college.

Regardless, she really takes you through her career, discreetly leaving out dating details and keeping the details at her sexual abuse by Larry Nassar to herself. Gymnasts, especially will love it, especially Raisman's candor at not succeeding at everything right away, and her torment with often scoring 4th in competition, just off the winners' podium. You can see the wisdom and leadership skills that made her captain of both her Olympic teams.

Ballad is an enjoyable book despite it starting off reading like it was auto-generated, especially the character names. Further, I am not a person who can usually tolerate an unsympathetic protagonist. I can barely even handle male protagonists, and young Coriolanus Snow is a selfish fucker.

I bookmarked and highlighted a bunch of passages that show how terrible Coryo (as is selfless cousin calls him) is, in appreciation of how Collins makes the reader have complicated feelings. I'll spare you because I lent my copy to a friend (first time I've shared my library card number, but she'd had the book snatched away by her libe before she could finish it, and it would be months before her turn came up again), and I'd do it again!

Some of the foreshadowing is heavy-handed, but I bet her publisher and editor were on her to give Hunger Games fans a few tastes.

A lot of people will probably enjoy this mystery with queer protagonists, but I found it too dense with self-conscious jokes. Isabel is an out-of-work social worker, who has been tasked by an elderly friend to unravel the mystery of the friend's granddaughter Maddy's death. Maddy was a sex worker and drug addict, so her death doesn't appear to be that big a mystery, until Isabel finds some strange items in the apartment Maddy had shared with another girl, who goes missing herself. Then Isabel's apartment gets trashed, and she's attacked outside a club.

If there were fewer jokey asides and footnotes, I might have made it through. Note to the publisher regarding one of the footnotes: "Oprah, Uma" was David Letterman, not Billy Crystal.

Another quality sports memoir, and about the same Olympics as the last one I read (Aly Raisman, Fierce): 2016, which drew my attention to the fact that although she had every reason to, Raisman doesn't mention Trump in her book, and Muhammad does. Muhammad succeeded by always keeping her faith and her responsibility to her communities (Muslims, Black people, and Black Muslims) first in her goals. But oops, I'm getting ahead of myself!

Muhammad was raised in Maplewood, NJ, in a family of five kids and a mom and dad. The kids were all encouraged (strongly. "forced" might not be too strong, but not in a bad way) to play sports. Fencing was big in Maplewood (who knew? I always wondered how people got into obscure/über fancy sports. Specifically, how do you get tracked into rhythmic gymnastics?), and Muhammad found her way into it, despite the sport's whiteness being off-putting. She eventually found role models and peers in a POC fencing club run by Black former Olympic fencer Peter Westbrook.

She doesn't downplay her athleticism, but still makes it clear that her success was due to hard hard hard work, competitiveness, intelligence, and having a plan. I'm having a hard time writing articulately about it, so here are some quotations:

Maplewood is a diverse town, but in the classrooms, segregation was in full effect.

Muhammad was a star student, as well as a star athlete and was accepted at several Ivies. She chose to attend Duke, which gave her the best package. She fenced for them, but her money wasn't dependent on doing so. That didn't stop a high school classmate from saying within Muhammad's hearing that she only got in because she was Black. She took all AP classes, while competing in three sports, for the love of Allah!

And that wasn't the only time peers were dicks to Muhammad. Per her account her fencing national team teammates and coaches didn't give her the time of day, not even rooting for her at the Olympics or expressing concern when she injured herself. Ugh, one of her tormentors said of their team, "'This is sport. It doesn't matter what hair color you have, or what religion you are. The point is to go out there and be the best athlete you can be,' American teammate Dagmara Wozniak said." Like Wozniak's purple hair got her death threats, as Muhammad's hijab did?!? The teammates totally mean girled Muhammad, accidentally forgetting to tell her about practice times, leaving her off emails, excluding her from team meals, and snubbing her mother. That behavior literally made Muhammad sick, but she overcame her anxiety-induced fatigue with therapy and meditation. I looked for a response to Proud from Wozniak and their other teammate Mariel Zagunis, but haven't seen any yet. Let me know if you catch anything.

This newfound weight on my shoulders changed and reshaped my conversations with God. Instead of praying for a win or praying during times of difficulties, I started to ask Allah to allow me to represent my community and my family well.

I'm not religious, but I am an altruist when I'm at my best, and I appreciate this perspective that Muhammad developed after being asked for her autograph by a young hijabi girl. Though hella competitive, she realized she wanted to succeed for Muslims, who needed a role model.
Here's where she starts on US politics in 2016,

...during the run-up to the November presidential elections, that Muslim Americans came under vicious attack from then presidential nominee Donald Trump, who in turn normalized bigotry and emboldened an entire subset of Americans to act on their hate.

Muhammad used her success to speak out against bigotry. She couldn't not. That's brave and badass, but also not a choice, for a lot of people who are firsts. Even with all the pressure on her, Muhammad wrote of her mindset at the Olympics,

I reminded myself to fence from a place of happiness and gratitude. Competing at the Olympic Games was a gift beyond my wildest dreams, and no matter what happened I was proud of myself for making it this far.

She goes on,

I came into the games ranked eighth in the world, and no matter what everyone else expected of me, I wanted to win. I always wanted to win and here on the world stage, I wanted to taste Olympic glory more than I ever had in my life.

This review is a spoiler-ish. It doesn't reveal any plot surprises, but if you prefer a really pristine outlook on a story before reading it, please just take my work for it that What Girls Are Made of is smart without being annoying clever, the mother-daughter relationship is hella weird, but not fraught, and there are interstitial stories that could blow your mind. Scroll down to read the review.


















We learn early on that Nina has done a Bad Thing, and because it makes me uncomfortable when protags are bad, I almost put What Girls down. I'm so glad I didn't because, in addition to being a feel-good abortion story, Nina's narrative is complex (in an accessible way) with lots of weird art history and saint tidbits that just about always end in a woman dying miserably to live happily ever after.

But that abortion was the kindest, best thing I have done for myself in as long as I can remember.

When I first started reading, I wondered if What Girls is an MFA novel (thank A.j. Michel for that term) because the writing is so full of resonant images like

The room smelled gross in a way I kind of liked

about a boy's room, obviously. I remember feeling that exact way as a teen about things that I knew weren't good for me, but wanted anyway.
And then there are some just wacky images like

Jesus came to her in a vision and placed a wedding ring--made of his own circumsized foreskin.

That's not Nina, it's one of her interstitial saints.

In her journey, Nina becomes less close to one of her friends and finds a better one in fellow dog shelter volunteer, Bekah, who is the kind of person who says stuff like

"Being of service. With love, you're waiting around for someone to give it to you, you know? But services...that's something you give."

Or maybe I just like that because it's how I feel about COVID-19 and mutual aid. There are a lot of people feeling sorry for themselves, for many legitimate reasons. But maybe if they did something for someone else, their own grievances might get put in perspective.

I finished reading this book a week ago. I know I gobbled it up in a day and a half. It's about a queer Black teen in a prom-crazy town. I thought I'd made a million highlights, but there's only one, "staff the table," which I highlighted because why do people still insist on saying "man the table"? BUT NOT VERY INFORMATIVE.

Liz Lightly is a likable character. She and her younger brother live with their grandparents because their mom died from Sickle Cell Anemia concerns. Her bother has the disease, too. Despite, or because of the adversities in her life, Liz is an achiever: she's valedictorian and concert master in her school's orchestra. She's got a tight group of friends, even if she lost one of her besties at the beginning of high school over a racist and sexist incident the former friend did not have Liz's back on.

Her BFF, Gina, turns out to not stand up for Liz either, especially when Gina feels threatened by new girl Mack's growing closeness with Liz. There is also an enemy: Rachel Collins, who asks of the Prom Queen competition,

"Okay, well, I just wanted to make sure there isn't going to be any funny business going on with the scoring process. Like we're not going to have to tell with an"--she turns around to look pointedly at me--"affirmative action aspect, perhaps?"

One of the reasons Liz takes to Mack is Mack's response

"Actually, Rebecca, before you start concerning yourself with skewed scoring, you should probably know that the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women."

Finally, someone is looking out for Liz!

A pandemic causes the United States to separate from America. In a novel.

Protagonist Polly Nader agrees to time travel to work for a megacorp, in order to secure treatment for per boyfriend, Frank. The megacorp, being a soulless megacorp, sends her to a time five years after the time she'd signed up for, landing her in 1998 Galveston, Texas, where she is meant to work restoring furniture for hotels and the tourism industry. She and Frank had a planned meet-up spot and time...in 1993, and in a Galveston that looked a little different in 1981 than it does in 1998.

Given our current state, the politics of the pandemic and its 1998 aftermath are super compelling, but An Ocean is really a meets/loses/gets back love story. Polly and Frank's relationship is believable and even relatable, if you're the emotionally distant one with a loving partner.

We all know by now that Harvey Weinstein was a bully and a rapist with a large reach in the entertainment industry. Ronan Farrow details it for the reader, along with the story of how NBC nearly prevented the Harvey Weinstein story from breaking. Farrow was maybe, possibly going to be cool with not addressing the NBC issues, but Rachel Maddow made him by asking him on air, pressing Farrow, until he implicated her employer! I love that story and another one of Maddow resisting bullying by NBC.

Farrow is a character in his telling of the Weinstein story, which makes it even more compelling than merely wanting to see that fucker go down. The last part of the book is less personal, and to me less interesting. Overall, it's still an exceptional read. I hear the audiobook is the way to go, with Farrow narrating, doing all the voices, and playing the primary source audio recordings.

I don't feel like I have a much better sense of Melania Trump now than before I read this critical biography, despite the author's extensive research and documentation (about 25 pages of notes, an index). There's a good chance that's because she's not all that knowable, or that she's too controlled to let anything slip. Jordan's interview subjects characterize Melania Trump as professional. Some say cool, and others say warm. She and her staff are reported to have the tightest lips in the White House. When talking to her parents and son, Trump speaks Slovenian, even if Donald is around, which apparently he isn't much. They genuinely seem to like each other, sources say, but they don't spend much time together, day to day.

When Melania does speak, her statements are generally broad, like "children shouldn't be harmed," but she doesn't get specific, even for the sake of illustrating her points. She seems to prefer her privacy above all else. The only time Jordan records Trump having lost her cool was once when a reporter made a weak joke about Donald being able to name a child "Barron," but not having the authority to bestow the title "Baron."

I had understood that the story would include Trump renegotiating her prenup, but though the original prenup was mentioned, there's no talking a revision. The information on how Trump and Donald reconciled after a breakup isn't provided, nor is their decision to get married. I wonder if the book got chopped up before its final publication. Anyone have an early ARC???