Mutmainah > Recent Status Updates

"nothing highlighted our privilege more than the menace to it"
"I think it's too easy to recount unhappy memories when you write about race. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles."
"If you were going to take the trouble to be white, you were supposed to do better than you could otherwise have done as a negro"

There are moments when the prose takes my breath away

“Remember that being in love is a form of blunt-force trauma. I was concussed with love for him. I bent my head to the cudgel”

“I was frightened with happiness, harrowed by it. There was no way that anyone could feel this much without also knowing they were going to lose it”

switched to the ebook because my brain was not holding on to any information, feels a little relentless

Saw this on Min Jin Lee’s ballot for the NYT’s 100 best books of the 21st century and had to read. Imagine my surprise that it had been sitting in my tbr for 7 years.

lots to chew on

Alternates between feeling so poignant (the bits about fraught parental relationships in particular) and aggravating (every time she pulls out a vape or makes some offhand quip I feel like I’m trapped in a maze of online discourse). I do think the central conceit works although I do prefer a ‘Practical Magic’ approach to whatever this is.