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Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age, is concerned with the rise of “woke” culture, a self obsessive tendency of privileged white liberals to perform progressive ideals of racial and gender equality. The novel is told from the perspectives of two women, one of whom is Alix, a young mother/influencer, whose female empowerment brand, LetHer Speak has gotten her connected with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as a book deal. The other woman is Emira, a 25 year old black girl who is struggling to figure out a viable career path for herself, who babysits Alix’s children on the weekdays.
The novel begins with an incident in a local grocery, when Alix calls Emira late at night and asks her to come over and bring her daughter, Briar, to the store to get her out of the house, as Alix’s home has been egged (Her husband is a local news anchor who had made a racial gaffe on live TV). Emira leaves a friend’s birthday party to take Briar to the very expensive grocery store near Alix’s home, where Emira is approached by security and accused of kidnapping Briar. The security guard is aggressive with Emira, but she resists peacefully, and calls Alix’s husband down to smooth out the situation. The whole thing was caught on camera by another patron, but Emira asks him not to send it to any news outlets, she feels ashamed and worried that her current or future employers would see it and judge her.
Emira is of course shook by the situation, but nowhere near indignant. She viewed the incident more as a “resounding declaration that hissed … This wouldn’t have happened if you had a real fucking job.” However, Alix views this incident as a call to action, as she worries that Emira might quit as a result, and she becomes obsessed with winning Emira’s affections. She becomes entirely consumed by this pursuit of Emira, she is missing book deadlines and slacking on work, devoting all of her time to looking at Emira’s phone, trying to learn more about her friends, and researching her music tastes. Reid does an excellent job of describing Alix’s eagerness to seem cool or woke, both from Alix and Emira’s perspectives, which for Alix appears to be misdirected desire to be seen and appreciated, but for Emira, is an uncomfortable invasion of privacy.
Alix is not obsessed with Emira herself, but rather obsessed with gaining Emira’s approval. She is obsessed with performative woke-ness, she needs the approval of this young black woman in order to fulfill her false self-image as a liberal crusader for equality. She wants to share things about herself with Emira, “like the fact that one of Alix’s closest friends was also black. That Alix’s new and favorite shoes were from Payless, and only cost eighteen dollars. That Alix had read everything that Toni Morrison had ever written.” Alix’s obsession with Emira is really just an obsession with herself.
While Emira is the center of Alix’s fetishistic cultural universe, Emira has many concerns outside of her relationship with her employer. She is most concerned with her future, and while she watches her friends get promotions and raises, she worries that she’ll be kicked off of her parents health insurance when she’s 26, and won’t have any alternative. She feels lost in young adulthood, which is a deeply relatable conundrum, and Reid endows her with a real human desire for advancement and growth. She also begins dating a white man, the man who caught her grocery store encounter on video, and is forced to navigate issues of racial difference with her new partner.
While Alix feels more like an archetype of the wealthy, white, and “woke” influencer mom, Emira is a nuanced and complex young woman trying to carve out space for herself in the world. Reid respects her characters and deftly handles many of the conundrums that have arisen from racial tensions in the digital age, and how they affect real life relationships. This feels like a very savvy and sharp debut from a writer with a lot more to say.