Attack Surface (Little Brother, #3)

by Cory Doctorow

My screen showed TANISHA, and an older pic, which dated back to the last time I’d seen her, which was at Burning Man, with her in a silver bathing suit and her afro all crazy around her head, playing an upright bass in a jam band that we’d wandered into.

This “afro all crazy” makes me more confused, not less, about what the character’s hair looked like.

I was able to cluster the Xnet supporters into different interest groups: fuck-shit-up nihilists, Latino kids, black kids, weekend warriors, super-nerds, big talkers, super-sharers.

This reads as the groups where race isn’t mentioned, the members are default white. The races called out are monolithic.

In the words of Ice-T, “Do I look like a motherfuckin’ role model?”

This is an Ice Cube in N.W.A lyric, not Ice-T.

On a good day at Grizzly, I’d speak to a Filipina Starbucks barista, a Bangladeshi Pizza Hut clerk, and Carrie Johnstone.

Why is Johnstone’s race not mentioned? I take it she’s white and we’re treating that as the default that needn’t be specified.