THIS IS MAJOR

A memoir in essays serves as a bold and deeply personal celebration of black women’s lives and culture.

Black women, writes poet and creative writing instructor Lawson, have always been “possessed of irony and rebellion,” blazing trails and disrupting the status quo. The problem is that “the world wants everything we have to offer, except us. It is not that Black Girl Magic isn’t real. It is that it doesn’t set us free.” In a narrative that is part memoir and part lively social history lesson, the author blends her own story with black women’s broader cultural histories. An essay on the rough emotional terrain of Lawson’s senior year in high school and early 20s gives way to pieces about her failure to become “Twitter famous,” dealing with bias in a “transparent creative sustainable millennial” workplace, and white people mistaking her for black celebrities such as Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg. With smart, infectious prose that often reads like poetry, Lawson illuminates the racism that renders so many black women and their accomplishments invisible—literally, in the case of AI’s discrimination problem. The author also details lesser-known histories about the true origins of the term “hipster” and Rodeo Caldonia, a 1980s-era performance collective of radical black Brooklynites who “were fourth-wave feminists before Riot Grrrl ever hit the third wave.” Lawson celebrates Diana Ross as “major,” an icon who is both “intimate and invincible,” a balm for black women who are routinely viewed as “difficult” or “impossible to get close to.” The music of SZA inspires an extended meditation on dating disasters, sexual double standards, and heartbreak. Lawson’s essays—some traditional, some experimental in form—deftly challenge the notion of #BlackGirlMagic” as an extension of the stereotype of black women as exotic beasts of burden unworthy of protection, as body parts and hairstyles to be appropriated. The author honors black women in their fullness.

A hilarious, heartbreaking, and endlessly entertaining homage to black women’s resilience and excellence.