anagramofbrat | Part Goodreads review, part answer to flutterbychild

So I picked up Baratunde Thurston's How to Be Black out of my library hold today. Here is the review I posted to Goodreads:

I'm actually surprised by how quick a read this was. I blew through this book in a little under four hours, most of which was punctuated by barks of laughter, wheezing, knowing smirks, and the occasional nod of "Yep, been there." And one instance of completely literally falling off my living room couch giggling like a hyena on Red Bull, but we'll get there in a minute.

Is this book hilarious? QUITE. But it's also a thought provoking account of A Black Experience. Not The Black Experience; one of the lessons of this book is that even though Black People Are Not A Monolith, we will be frequently treated as a representative of said nonexistent monolith. There are also wickedly funny instructions for how to handle that nonconsensual responsibility.

It is interesting, having read Melissa V. Harris-Perry's Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America not very long ago, I feel like following it up with this work, though accidental, ended up being correct. While addressing different aspects of being black in America, I feel like they work well as companion pieces, and certainly some of the sting left by Harris-Perry's examination of American black women is relieved, if not removed, by Thurston's impish poking fun at some of the same problems.

That and Thurston is my hero for using the following sentence as an example of what Angry Negroes Say:

"Skiing, my Sistah? Are you so obsessed with whiteness that you must frolic in it?"

That was the point where I fell off the couch, by the way. It is now my mission to find ways to use "frolic in whiteness" in everyday conversation FOREVER now.

Trying to decide now if "frolicking in whiteness" will be my new euphemism for living in the Valley in general or just for having sex with