I will admit I feel a bit guilty counting this as a book read. It's not even 100 pages long (well spaced, with large pullout quotes sprinkled liberally throughout), and took me about an hour to read. I did, however, pay the same price for it as I would for other, much longer books (which seems somewhat ridiculous -- and I bought an e-version on Kobo, which was half the price of the hardcover -- the paperback won't be available until this fall) -- so I will justify myself that way. ;) The "book" is, in fact, a lecture she delivered in Edinburgh in 2018 before 4,000 people, with an introduction and epilogue added, explaining how she came to deliver the lecture and what happened afterwards.
It did not begin especially auspiciously for me: Coel almost immediately launches into a story about her hatred of moths -- an image that she repeats throughout the book, both in words and graphics used to divide the sections of the book. I shuddered as I remembered the "miller" moths that used to flit around my grandmother's old house, out on the screened-in porch and inside, around the lamps in the bedroom my sister and I shared. I could NOT go to sleep until every single moth had been hunted down, killed and disposed of (by my mother or grandfather -- certainly not by me!), and I still fly into a fit if one happens to get into our condo when the screen door is open. I will admit to muttering, "What do moths have to do with what she has to say, anyway??" In the epilogue, however, she makes a comparison between moths and butterflies, and "aha!" -- it all finally began to make some sense. (I didn't realize until later, reading others' Goodreads reviews, that this section is titled "The Aftermoth"...!)
"The term 'misfits' takes on dual notions; a misfit is one who looks at life differently. Many, however, are made into misfits because life looks at them differently," Coel writes. She describes her experiences as a black woman growing up in a social housing development in the middle of London, and later in the TV industry. She makes an argument for greater honesty and transparency, diversity and inclusion, and breaking down all kinds of barriers, which many don't even realize exist.
3.5 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 4. There is some powerful content here -- but it's a little disjointed and ambiguous in parts. The points she's making are not always immediately clear. "I will do what I'm best at: tell stories, in the hope that you'll be able to connect the dots, find threads to tie together," she says in the introduction. (She says essentially the same thing at the beginning of her lecture.) But sometimes it takes a while for the patterns to emerge.
(There's also a fair amount of references that left me, and no doubt other North Americans, scratching my head. I knew what Boots was and who Claire Foy is, but Kat Slater (who gets mentioned several times)?? -- But I had to chuckle, because several of these references were asterisked and, at the very back of the book, there's a page of notes explaining who Kat Slater is, among other things. Thank you, Michaela! ;) )
I will be thinking about this one for a while, and I'm looking forward to our discussions about it this month in Gateway Women's private community. It's certainly worth a read -- but see if you can get a copy on sale or from the library. ;) (Apparently the lecture is available to watch/read online too.)
This was Book #6 read to date in 2022 (and Book #1 finished in February), bringing me to 13% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books ahead of schedule. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."
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