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A debut essay collection probes millennial womanhood.
Do You See What I See?
Mixing memoir and
incisive cultural criticism,
New Yorker staff writer
and former Jezebel
deputy editor Jia
Tolentino’s Trick Mirror
(Random House) exposes
what it’s like for women
to come of age amid
the internet’s vast,
mirage-laden wasteland.
Considering topics
ranging from “the
rise of athleisure as late-capitalist fetishwear” to
the proliferation of Instagram-mandated, faux-
empowering entrepreneurial endeavors that
promise “photogenic personal confidence isthe key to unlocking the riches of the world,”
she reckons with the notion that “today’s ideal
woman is of a type that coexists easily with
feminism in its current market-friendly and
mainstream form.”
Tolentino’s restless intellect often
shepherds the reader to unpredictable places.
In an essay on her participation in the early-
aughts teen reality show Girls v. Boys: Puerto
Rico, for instance, she somehow spins an
anecdote about speed-eating hot mayonnaise
into a musing on the solipsism and performative
passivity of youth: “I’ve always felt that I was
special and acted accordingly.”
Tolentino is special. With Trick Mirror, she has
solidified her status as one of our most evocative
social commentators. —MICHELLE HARTMIGRATIONS
Edwidge Danticat’s stirring new
stories feed the mind and the soul.EVERYTHING INSIDE (Pantheon) is a
haunting, profound collection by Edwidge
Danticat—an answered prayer for those
who have long treasured her essential
contributions to the Caribbean literary
canon, beginning with 1994’s Breath, Eyes,
Memory, which was an Oprah’s Book Club
selection. The eight intimate tales, centered
primarily around the diverse experiences of
women in Port-au-Prince and Miami’s
Haitian diaspora, probe what it means to
love a deeply troubled country, to leave it,
and to then come home. With little
introduction, we drop into people’s lives
midcrisis, just as they’re confronting choices
from which there’s no turning
back; these characters feel not
like strangers, but close
friends. In “The Port-au-Prince
Marriage Special,” a woman
who has moved back to Haiti
to open a hotel with her
husband is forced to reckon
with her privilege when the
young nanny caring for her
child is diagnosed with AIDS.
In “Dosas,” musician Blaise
borrows money from his ex-
wife, Elsie, to pay the ransom
for his kidnapped girlfriend—the woman he
left Elsie for. And in “Seven Stories,”
Brooklyn-based Kimberly writes an essayabout her childhood friend
Callie’s traumatic past, including
her father’s assassination. The
publication of the piece leads to their
reconnection on an unnamed Caribbean
island, where Callie has married thecountry’s prime minister. How does an
artist write so deftly from the outside
about people’s interior lives? Everything
Inside is an answer to that question:
This remarkable writer shows us how.
—ALEXIA ARTHURS86 SEPTEMBER^2019 OPRAHMAG.COM ILLUSTRATION BY^ Lori Lohstoeter
TOLENTINO:
ELENA^ MUDD.