I read a few books I truly loved last month, but this was the one that made me think the most and that really has stuck with me the most. It's been on my mental TBR since last year, and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it and wish I'd done so sooner.
Such a Fun Age is about 25 year old Emira, a Black woman who works as a babysitter for a wealthy white family. She's at the grocery store with their child late at night when the security guard accuses her of kidnapping the child and she's forced to call the kid's dad to help defend her. A white member of the public films the encounter with the guard and offers to help Emira by spreading it on social media, but she doesn't want that to happen. The book then shows how this encounter forces both Emira and the family she babysits for to see their relationship in a slightly different light.
This book really wasn't what I expected it to be. I'd heard it was about a mistaken child kidnapping and thought it would be a bit of a mumsy, family style comedic book, which partly put me off reading it for so long, but I was totally off the mark in whatever I'd heard about it. This book is an important read, and I really think highlighted important issues in a very nuanced way. The way that the mother of the family's attitude changes towards Emira after the racist grocery store encounter shows the well-meaning white saviour stereotype/complex from a range of different angles, all of which came together to give a really great overview of the problems surrounding it. You saw the mother's perspective on it, thinking she was constantly trying to help Emira have a better life, Emira's perspective in sort of shielding herself from the reality of what was going on, and Emira's friends' insights into what they felt was really going on.
It seemed important in the book that the white saviour role was occupied by both a man and a woman because it showed the ways that this is different between the two sexes. In this instance both attitudes came from wanting to prove that they 'weren't racist' due to other issues in their lives. This whole plot point that Emira's boss and her white boyfriend are both in their opinion well intentioned, 'not racist' individuals with Black friends who therefore are sort of separate to the rest of the white population, was really important. What Kiley Reid does very well is show the microaggressions (and straight up aggressions) that these characters still act out despite their ideals. The book also looked an interracial relationships and fetishisation in interesting ways, as well as wealth and privilege through the lens of race.
I really hope that book clubs continue to pick up this book and it gets the recognition it really does deserve. I can't wait to see what Reid brings out next.
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