An introvert braves the cybersex, the pitfalls of eating out alone, the difficulties of weight gain, and other hurdles faced by shy people living in a world that urges us to be cool as "J" humorously recounts her life in all its awkward glory.
A People Pick! “One of the year’s must-reads.” –ELLE “[A] provocative, heart-breaking, and frequently hilarious collection.” –GLAMOUR “Essential, vital, and urgent.” –HARPER’S BAZAAR In the vein of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, but wholly its own, a provocative, humorous, and, at times, heartbreaking collection of essays on what it means to be black, a woman, a mother, and a global citizen in today's ever-changing world. Black women have never been more visible or more publicly celebrated than they are now. But for every new milestone, every magazine cover, every box office record smashed, every new face elected to public office, the reality of everyday life for black women remains a complex, conflicted, contradiction-laden experience. An American journalist who has been living and working in London for a decade, Kenya Hunt has made a career of distilling moments, movements, and cultural moods into words. Her work takes the difficult and the indefinable and makes it accessible; it is razor sharp cultural observation threaded through evocative and relatable stories. Girl Gurl Grrrl both illuminates our current cultural moment and transcends it. Hunt captures the zeitgeist while also creating a timeless celebration of womanhood, of blackness, and the possibilities they both contain. She blends the popular and the personal, the frivolous and the momentous in a collection that truly reflects what it is to be living and thriving as a black woman today.
Introduction: independents change the channel -- Developing open tv: innovation for the open network, 1995-2005 -- Open tv production: revaluing creative labor -- Open tv representation: reforming cultural politics -- Open tv distribution: struggling for an independent market -- Scaling open tv: the challenges of big data television -- Epilogue: open tv and the future of the networked era
From comedian Quinta Brunson comes a deeply personal and funny collection of essays featuring anecdotes about trying to make it when you're broke, overcoming self-doubt and depression, and how she's used humor to navigate her career in unusual directions. Quinta Brunson is a master of viral Internet content: without any traditional background in media, her humorous videos were the first to break through on Instagram's platform, receiving millions of views. From there, Brunson's wryly observant POV attracted the attention of BuzzFeed's motion picture development department, leading her to produce viral videos there about topics like interracial dating, millennial malaise, and seeing your ex in public. Now, Brunson is bringing her comedic chops to the page in She Memes Well, an earnest, laugh-out-loud collection about her weird road to Internet notoriety. In her debut essay collection, Quinta applies her trademark humor and heart to discuss what it was like to go from student loan debt-broke to "halfway recognizable--'don't I know you somewhere?'" level-of-fame. With anecdotes that range from the funny and zany--like her experience trying to find her signature hairstyle--to more grounded material about living with depression, Brunson's voice is entirely authentic and eminently readable. Perfect for fans of Phoebe Robinson's You Can't Touch My Hair, Samantha Irby's We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and Issa Rae's The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, She Memes Well will charm and entertain a growing, engaged audience.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From award-winning actress and political activist America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first-person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures. America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents’ homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.
This “one-of-a-kind read” offers insightful essays, poignant life advice, and pithy pearls of wisdom from the comedian and star of HBO’s Insecure (Entertainment Weekly). Anyone who has seen Amanda Seales’s acclaimed stand-up special I Be Knowin, her long-running TV series Insecure, or her groundbreaking gameshow Smart Funny & Black, knows that this woman is a force of nature. In both life and career, she has fearlessly and passionately charted her own course. Now she’s bringing her life’s lessons and laughs to the page with her signature blend of academic intellectualism, Black American colloquialisms, and pop culture fanaticism. This volume of essays, axioms, original illustrations, and photos provides Seales’s trademark “self-help from the hip” style of commentary, fueled by ideology formed from her own victories, struggles, research, mistakes, risks, and pay-offs. Unapologetic, fiercely funny, and searingly honest, Small Doses engages, empowers, and enlightens readers on how to find their truths while still finding the funny!
You may know W. Kamau Bell from his new, Emmy-nominated hit show on CNN, United Shades of America. Or maybe you’ve read about him in the New York Times, which called him “the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years.” Or maybe from The New Yorker, fawning over his brand of humor writing: "Bell’s gimmick is intersectional progressivism: he treats racial, gay, and women’s issues as inseparable." After all this love and praise, it’s time for the next step: a book. The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell is a humorous, well-informed take on the world today, tackling a wide range of issues, such as race relations; fatherhood; the state of law enforcement today; comedians and superheroes; right-wing politics; left-wing politics; failure; his interracial marriage; white men; his up-bringing by very strong-willed, race-conscious, yet ideologically opposite parents; his early days struggling to find his comedic voice, then his later days struggling to find his comedic voice; why he never seemed to fit in with the Black comedy scene . . . or the white comedy scene; how he was a Black nerd way before that became a thing; how it took his wife and an East Bay lesbian to teach him that racism and sexism often walk hand in hand; and much, much more.
Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she's thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realises that there is a lot more at stake than her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
Western culture has long regarded black female sexuality with a strange mix of fascination and condemnation, associating it with everything from desirability, hypersexuality, and liberation to vulgarity, recklessness, and disease. Yet even as their bodies and sexualities have been the subject of countless public discourses, black women’s voices have been largely marginalized in these discussions. In this groundbreaking collection, feminist scholars from across the academy come together to correct this omission—illuminating black female sexual desires marked by agency and empowerment, as well as pleasure and pain, to reveal the ways black women regulate their sexual lives. The twelve original essays in Black Female Sexualities reveal the diverse ways black women perceive, experience, and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. Yet they do not shy away from exploring the complex ways in which black women negotiate the more traumatic aspects of sexuality and grapple with the legacy of negative stereotypes. Black Female Sexualities takes not only an interdisciplinary approach—drawing from critical race theory, sociology, and performance studies—but also an intergenerational one, in conversation with the foremothers of black feminist studies. In addition, it explores a diverse archive of representations, covering everything from blues to hip-hop, from Crash to Precious, from Sister Souljah to Edwidge Danticat. Revealing that black female sexuality is anything but a black-and-white issue, this collection demonstrates how to appreciate a whole spectrum of subjectivities, experiences, and desires.
"Ann has always seen the power and potential in young women. The Big Life helps make all our dreams closer than ever." —Lauren Conrad, designer and New York Times bestselling author of Lauren Conrad Celebrate "The Big Life is a guide for women in their 20s and 30s who are hungry for a job they love, a supportive network of friends, respect from their bosses, and partners who want all those things for them as badly as they do." —The New York Times Millennial women are changing what it means to be powerful and successful in the world—for everyone. Forever. You want The Big Life—that delicious cocktail of passion, career, work, ambition, respect, money, and a monumental relationship. And you want it on your own terms. Forget climbing some corporate ladder, you want a career with twists and turns and adventure. For you, success only matters if it’s meaningful. Ann Shoket knows the evolving values of young women more than anyone. She’s the voice behind the popular Badass Babes community, a sisterhood of young, hungry, ambitious women who are helping each other through the most complex issues around becoming who you’re meant to be. As the trailblazing editor-in-chief of Seventeen for the better part of a decade, Shoket led provocative conversations that helped young women navigate the tricky terrain of adolescence and become smart, confident, self-assured young women. Now that they are adding muscle to the framework of their lives, she’s continuing the conversation with The Big Life. The Big Life is packed with actionable guidance combined with personal advice from high-profile millennial women who have already achieved tremendous success, plus intimate conversations with a cast of compelling characters and Shoket’s own stories on her quest for The Big Life. You’ll learn to tackle all of the issues on heavy rotation in your mind such as: • How to craft a career that’s also a passion. • How to get respect from a boss who thinks you’re a lazy, entitled, and self-obsessed millennial • Why you need a “squad” of people who support you as you build your Big Life • How a side hustle will make you smarter, hotter, and more in control of your destiny. • Why work/life balance is a sham and your need to embrace the mess. • How to find a partner whose eyes light up when you talk about your ambition. Written in Shoket’s friendly and authoritative style, The Big Life will help you recognize your power, tap into your ambition, and create your own version of The Big Life.