Girls and Racism
The author considers the state of television and racism from the perspective not of direct and blatant offensiveness, but a more complex philosophical point of view. Of course, it helps that television executives are pretty simple and direct in their job capacity:
“Now, having been in the industry for a couple of years, I’m not entirely sure it’s blatant racism, as I had once assumed. It’s more complicated than that. As Ralph Ellison once posited, we’re invisible to them. We’re simply not on their radar. As long as the people who are in charge aren’t us, things will never change. Girls, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls. What do they all have in common? The universal gender classification, `girl,’ is white. In all three of these successful series, a default girl (or two) is implied and she is white. That is the norm and that is what is acceptable. Anything else is niche.”
Computing Before the Internet
Hard as it may be for some younger people to believe, there was actually a rather extended period of time when the personal computer was used on a daily basis without any online connections. It was just a computer screen, a keyboard, a mouse, and programs capable of fitting on a floppy disk. And we loved it! But mainly because we had no idea what was waiting just around the corner:
“When alone, and mom-approved, I actually loved to hear the robotic crunching and whirring that the printer made while laying to ink my very own written words. But the computer in my room paled in comparison to the one downstairs, in the basement. For one thing, the large floppy disks—I think they were actually called hard disks, what the f%4# 90s ?—were becoming extinct, and rightfully so, since the data on those things could be lost with the smudge of a finger. And since my computer took only the “hard” disks, my game choices were limited to nerdy learning games and text-based adventure games with no visuals. BLECH. BORING. BOO.”
Awkward Black Hair
Peppering the narrative proper are sections of the book acting as a “guide” to being an Awkward Black Girl. The sections are titled “ABG Guide” and one is subtitled “The Hair Advantage.” It is a detail-oriented and imagery-laden overview of the various difficulties inherent in dealing with hair issues among black society:
“Even within the black community, hair adjectives like laid , fried , nappy , jacked , whipped , dry , and snatched are all used to convey approval or disapproval. They are used judgmentally, as if they assess not just hair but also character, quality of life, and decision-making skills. When dealing with people who pose so-called questions even as they judge you, here are some foolproof responses.”
The Eureka Moment
The imagery surrounding one of those eureka! Moments when it all comes together is often a crowd-pleaser when constructed as a scene in a movie. In real life, of course, things rarely are quite so cinematic since those epiphanies tend to take place inside the mind. It is only when writing about it in recollected thoughts that images really being to take shape and accompany the excitement inside the head:
“It all made sense: my shyness, all the times I was dismissed for not being `black enough,’ my desire to reframe the images of black film and television, which I started to do when I created a series in college called Dorm Diaries, my inability to dance—these were all symptoms of my Awkward Blackness. This is an identity, I thought. I could make T-shirts. I could make sketches/commercials for the T-shirts. Ooh, and what if they were animated? Without knowing it, I started penning an outline of what would be my first and second episodes of Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. I grew excited. This was my purpose. This particular moment of despair had sparked my creativity.”
