Emira can see Kelley feels that being close to black people makes him cool, but he seems so thoughtful and smart and well-meaning that she also wants to believe he’s interested in her specifically and not just in her blackness. She starts dating Kelley, the white guy who made the tape, and is bemused to find that all his friends are black and most of his ex-girlfriends were women of color when he casually drops the n-word in front of her, she doesn’t know how to react. But she just wants a real job.Īfter that altercation at the grocery store, Emira finds herself caught in a love triangle of sorts. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark In Such a Fun Age, everyone wants the black girl’s attention. And it offers them the chance to exploit Emira without ever obligating them to interact with her as a human being with agency who has wants and needs of her own. It also gives them the chance to fetishize and gleefully consume Emira’s youth, her blackness, and her perceived coolness. It isn’t just potentially humiliating for Emira, it’s also exciting for the people around her - the nice white guy who made the tape, Emira’s nice white employers - because it offers them the chance to posture defensively about how not-racist they are by getting loudly angry at this racist white security guard. She calls Briar’s dad and has him come to the grocery store to defuse the situation - “he’s an old white guy so I’m sure everyone will feel better” - and when she sees a concerned white dude filming the confrontation on her behalf, she has him send her a copy and then delete it from his phone.īut the threat of that tape getting out looms over everything that follows in Such a Fun Age. The outraged BuzzFeed headline practically writes itself.Įmira, however, badly wants to avoid both getting arrested and going viral.
It’s 2016 in the world of the novel, and viral videos depicting police officers and security guards acting casually brutal toward black people are a topic of much discussion.
Both the security guard and Emira’s charge, Briar, are white. Then the store’s security guard comes over and accuses Emira of kidnapping the child.Įmira is black. Emira, a 26-year-old babysitter in Philadelphia, is amusing her 3-year-old charge by dancing with her through the aisles of a fancy grocery store. Such a Fun Age, a witty and biting debut novel from Kiley Reid that’s a Reese’s Book Club pick and is already in TV development with Lena Waithe, begins with a moment you can imagine going viral through your Twitter feed.
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