Kim McLarin

This book of essays is right up there with those by Samantha Irby and Phoebe Robinson, brash and honest Black women who've got so much to offload and to teach, especially to "people who don't see color." James Baldwin is another powerful influence on this writer who currently runs the MFA Program at Emerson College, Boston. Her keen observations focus on travel (with a white husband, deciding whether or not to evoke his privilege), bomb threats, living with an aging parent, kindness, the stress and joy of throwing a party, taking motorcycle lessons, surviving the death of a beloved dog, coping with Black hair, and commencement addresses. It is a must-read for those of us trying to figure out why everything is wrong and how we can help to fix everything. Yes, us.

"If Black people hated America, America would be constantly on fire -and Black people would all be dead. Instead of just some of us."

"James Baldwin and Hannah Arendt are worried about the opposite sides of the same coin: Arendt is worried what Black people will do to White people if we were ever to gain power. Baldwin, having seen clearly what power has done to White folks, is worried what it would do to us."

"Whiteness as a racial category was a necessary and deliberate creation of the slave-based economies of the English Caribbean and North America, but in place...in order to justify the theft of land, the genocide of Indigenous people, and the enslavement of Africans."

"Some people age like trees because they live in a forest and some people age like animals because their world is a zoo."

"Not everything is about race" is such a funny thing for a White person to say to a Black person. I can't count how many times I've rolled my eyes in response. Nobody wishes this was more so than Black people."

"In truth I'm probably not nearly as kind as I like to think I am. Probably neither are you. Though it is unkind of me to say."

"The dictionary defines community as 'a unified body of individuals'. In America, we tend to take that definition backward, starting with "individuals" and stubbornly halting there."

"From what I see, what I have seen, the arc of the moral universe bends whichever way it gets pulled. The only way to bend the arc back the right way is for each of us to grab hold and pull. Hard.'"… (más)

Everyday Something Has Tried to Kill Me And Has Failed, by Kim McLarin, brings personal experience and cultural analysis together into a very readable account of where we are, and aren't, as a society.

McLarin's ability to use the personal to reflect aspects of the larger society as well as the reverse is made even more powerful by her authorial voice. She doesn't make apologies for things that might make some readers uncomfortable yet presents them in a way that will make you productively uncomfortable. By that, I mean rather than going on the defense because you don't like what the facts might say about your place in an inequitable society she makes you see these things through a human lens, so you hopefully think about ways to improve society than ways to defend it as an extension of defending yourself. You aren't being attacked here, but you are being given the chance to understand our world from a different perspective than you might normally have.

I think one of the keys to addressing so many serious issues without making the book a downer to read is her ability to tell personal stories that engage you multiple ways, of which race and gender are but a couple, albeit a very significant couple. Family relations, pets, changing stance on what one wants in their life, these are common to all of us. Seeing how these common elements play out differently for a Black woman versus, in my case, a (perceived as) white man helps to make the bigger argument more understandable.

I would highly recommend this collection of essays to anyone with an interest in race relations and systemic racism, as well as those readers who like their social commentary delivered with a more personal touch. McLarin will likely be someone you would like to meet and talk with, I know I would.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.… (más)