Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be
Ratings4
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.3
A passionate, magnetic memoir that explores writer and podcast host Nichole Perkins's obsession with pop culture and the challenges of navigating relationships as a Black woman through feminism and Southern mores. Pop culture is the Pandora's Box of our lives. Racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, inclusion, exclusion, and hope -- all of these intractable and unavoidable features course through the media we consume. Examining pop culture's impact on her life, Nichole Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media and the internet from the perspective of one southern Black woman. She explores her experience with mental illness and how the TV series Frasier served as a crutch, how her role as mistress led her to certain internet message boards that prepared her for current day social media, and what it means to figure out desire and sexuality and Prince in a world where marriage is the only acceptable goal for women. Combining her sharp wit, stellar pop culture sensibility, and trademark spirited storytelling, Nichole boldly tackles the damage done to women, especially Black women, by society's failure to confront the myths and misogyny at its heart, and her efforts to stop the various cycles that limit confidence within herself. By using her own life and loves as a unique vantage point, Nichole humorously and powerfully illuminates how to take the best pop culture has to offer and discard the harmful bits, offering a mirror into our own lives.
Reviews with the most likes.
It was a pretty solid read, Perkins has a very pleasant prose and she comes across as honest, vulnerable in her own way, intelligent and fun.
I had to smile when she said that white men's skin feels like Playdoh because while I wouldn't put it quite like that I know exactly what she means and that's actually something I find endearing.
This book isn't about pop culture in the way that a lot of recent/semi-recent collections of essays are, this one is way more personal and I think its treatment of pop culture comes across as more organic to how we experience pop culture when talking about it isn't our job.
There's a fair amount of talk about sex and descriptions of intimate moment, not a bad thing just something to be aware of (at least for some of us). There's also a little bit about religion and about the author's autistic brother and her relationship with him (it's not done in a woe is me I have an autistic in my life but Perkins does describe the period in time where she, as a child, prayed for her brother to be made normal, so again just something to be aware of).
Part essays collection and part memoir, no rating because I don't rate memoirs.
