The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae Read Free Book Online

responded to her. But apparently it was insensitive empathy—if that even exists.
    And then she blocked me and publicly added me to her ever-growing list of people that she hates. She compared the oppression of being a disabled sex worker to the oppression of being a person of color. What is the difference between my oppression and your oppression? she asked. At first I was amused. What an extremely unpleasant and delusional stripper , I thought. Does she make the men and women she entertains feel guilty for enjoying themselves, too? Geez. I went to bed that night thinking, I doubt I could have learned any twerk tips from her anyway. And then the more I thought about it over the nextcouple of days, the more her offense and her general anger got under my skin. Why was she so mad? What was it about what I said that triggered her? And what did we have in common, if anything?
    As I perused her time line from another, unblocked account ( haha, loophole ! ), I noticed how upset she was about the representation of “sex workers,” as she called them, in the media. In all, it seemed she just wanted an accurate, fair representation of her field of work, as opposed to continuing to be the butt of jokesin television and film. At the very core of her anger was a desire to see a respectable reflection of herself.
    I immediately thought of my absolute favorite Junot Díaz quote. He said:
    You guys know about vampires? . . . You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “ Yo is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?” And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.
    Isn’t that the realest shit ever?
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    The first screenplay I ever wrote was called Judged Cover , about a chubby, unattractive, black high school girl who gets her first breakout role in a movie. She deals with an unsupportive mother, starts hanging with the wrong Hollywood crowd, turns to drugs, and eventually commits suicide. It was shitty and sad, but I was so proud of it. I remember giving it to Monique, one of my best friends, to read, and the next school day she came back and asked, “Are you going to play the lead?” I planned on it. The script wasn’t autobiographical by any means, but I could relate to feeling too unattractive to play a leading lady. Also, the fact that she recognized that I could play the pathetic character I had written only confirmed my insecurity.
    Ten years later I saw Precious , and I remember thinking it was Judged Cover on steroids. WHO THE FUCK’S LIFE WAS THA T ?! I sat in the theater with my two best friends, Jerome and Devin, fuming as the final scene played. Not because I disliked the film, not because I couldn’t relate to the story, but because Hollywood was so fucking excited about this movie.
    I remember turning to my friends after the film and saying, “From now on, I’m going to end all of my complaints with, ‘. . . but at least I’m not Precious.’ ” We spent the rest of the day grateful that we were not Precious. But then I thought, is that was it takes to create a sympathetic black female lead character? I could imagine the boardroom meeting.
    She has to be obese!
    She has to be super poor.
    She has to be illiterate!
    She has to have an abusive mother who molests her.
    She has to be a rape victim of her FATHER!
    She has to be teenage and pregnant.
    She has to be HIV