Samantha Irby’s essay collection Wow, No Thank You is hilarious, earthy, honest, and refreshing. It’s also full of shit, but I mean that literally. It reads like a series of texts from your funniest friend, in those no-holds-barred conversations you can only have when you’ve blown past the polite barriers—like, say, toilet stalls—that most people use to screen their bodily functions and private musings thereof.
Irby’s essays made me consistently chuckle and occasionally shriek with laughter. She also throws in some sharp insights about what it means to be Black and queer in the U.S., especially after moving with her partner from Chicago to a rural town.
[I’ll pause here to note that I didn’t have to say anything explicit for you to understand the implicit threat of violence in that last sentence. Now would be a good time to donate or sign a petition or read about police violence, if you haven’t already. This email can wait.]
Irby’s humor explores more than those aspects of her identity. She also covers 90’s mixtape nostalgia, the awkward dance of making friends as an adult, figuring out what “financial literacy” means, and, in, one of my favorite essays, how to Google your way through home ownership. It’s highly relatable no matter what kinds of habitations you’ve had to maintain (“would love to install a dimmer switch but I also love not being electrocuted what is a property tax a lawnmower costs HOW MUCH”).
As someone who will, in all likelihood, have re-read this email approximately six dozen times before hitting send, I also appreciated Irby’s emergency-dials for anxiety: “Hello, 911? I’ve been lying awake for an hour each night, reliving a two-second awkward experience I had in front of a casual acquaintance three years ago, for eight months.” Wow, no thank you for that personal attack…but yes please to more like this collection.
If you like it:
Comedian Ali Wong’s Dear Girls is full of a similar humor. The collection of letters to her daughters contains funny and ruthless truths about work, dating, marriage, motherhood, identity, and legacy.
If you don’t:
If you prefer your humor a little less minutely or scatalogically observed, try PG Wodehouse’s eternally silly and proper—or at least euphemistic—Jeeves & Wooster series.
Addendum: A Black Fiction Reading List
I started drafting this post before the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder. Since then, the police have also killed Tony McDade, David McAtee, and Rayshard Brooks, and attacked countless others. The police killed three people a day last year, and 99% of these killers have not been charged—including the cops who killed Breonna Taylor in March. The fight will not be over until we make systemic changes to both prevent police violence and hold people accountable for it.
Huge as it is, policing is only one aspect of the problem. I want and need to do my part to dismantle the systemic racism in this country, and it can happen in ways as small as speaking up on a platform like this.
This month, I also wanted to share a list of great fiction by Black authors from around the world. One of the ways we non-Black readers can keep educating ourselves is by reading more stories that don’t get privileged in white, middle-class syllabi, so that we don’t keep ignoring and erasing experiences that are unlike our own. This list is not comprehensive or exhaustive; it is a collection of beautifully written books that I’ve loved and learned from. I’ve kept it to fiction because:
a) there are a ton of great anti-racist education reading lists out there already and
b) Black stories are about more than oppression!
“Doing the work” means reading about more than the history and reality of racism (although please do that as well). It means desegregating our bookshelves, expanding our definitions of what we accept as “classic” and canonical, and understanding the problems in many cherished texts. There is a lot of work to do. Fiction is one simple way to build it into your established habits, providing insight, empathy, and entertainment all at once.
What we—speaking as and to white readers here—need to do is keep reading, keep talking, and keep holding ourselves accountable for the things that we have tacitly and explicitly accepted. This is a constant, neverending process. Keep listening and learning, please. I will too. And I’ll always welcome any feedback or recommendations you want to share.
Black Fiction: A Starting Point
The Sellout, Paul Beatty—one of the funniest and best books I’ve ever read. A twisting, challenging, absurd satire of U.S. race politics. Particularly fun for the Angelenos.
Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid—If you read one book on this list right now, read this one. Reid does a phenomenal job of conveying the nuances of racism and the complex perspectives, experiences, and delusions of both Black and white characters.
Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams—the emotional roller coaster of one's twenties as a Jamaican British millennial. If Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair” were a novel.
Red At the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson—an intimate portrait of three generations of a family in Brooklyn and one of the best books I read last year.
Passing, Nella Larsen—the stark contrast of two women’s lives in 1920’s American society as they “pass” as white, or not.
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo—a symphony of queer and Black British voices; basically the epitome of intersectionality. A new favorite.
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin—a queer man in Paris; shit goes down. (Also recommended: literally anything by James Baldwin.)
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi—a sprawling, multi-generational story about a Ghanaian family’s bifurcated lineage: one side free, the other enslaved.
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Ntozake Shange—a lyrical 1970’s play featuring seven women’s stories. (Can we swap a few Vagina Monologues for revivals of this?)
The Piano Lesson, August Wilson—along with any and all of his plays; Wilson creates deep characters and swift movement through a plot.
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry—Nina Simone wrote “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” about the author of this play so honestly, what more could I add?
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—the story of a Nigerian-American woman and the tensions of living between countries.
Half a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—multiple characters’ perspectives on the Biafran War: moving, disturbing, and powerful.
Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid—an Antiguan girl’s thoughtful, internal coming-of-age.
On Beauty, Zadie Smith—members of a mixed-race family grapple with their hopes, identities, and relationships. Also try her novel White Teeth.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe—beautiful storytelling that follows one man’s life through pre- and post-colonial Nigeria.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston—great character and relationship development throughout a woman’s life in the U.S. south.
Bitch Planet, Kelly Sue DeConnick & Valentine de Landro—dystopian graphic novel series where disobedient women are imprisoned on a planet of their own. Seriously excellent.
Bonus: The Expendable Man, Dorothy Hughes—Hughes is not a Black author, but I’m including her novel here because of the way a plot twist challenges readers’ biases and assumptions.
If you made it this far…wow, thank you!! Thank you for reading, listening, thinking, and acting on these issues. To my great delight, it turns out a few people actually read some of the recommended books last month, and wanted to talk about them?! So hit reply if you’d be interested in participating in some kind of virtual book club based around these monthly recs, too.