You Get What You Pay For: Essays (Unabridged)
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In her “witty and searing” first essay collection, award-winning poet Morgan Parker examines “the cultural legacy of Black womanhood and the meaning of finding ‘well-being’ in a world that wasn’t built for you” (Vogue).
“Riveting and deeply personal . . . filled with poignant insights.”—Cosmopolitan
Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious.
With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Morgan Parker has a razor-sharp mind and an eye for both beauty and BS, which has made her poetry collections like Magical Negro essential reading. And with her debut essay collection, she doesn’t miss the mark. After laying out her position as a Black Millennial woman who grew up in a comfortable southern California suburb, Parker spends every essay examining and interrogating those not-so-simple facts. So while an essay about Bill Cosby begins with a variation of the familiar “Did he do it?” conversation, it quickly spirals outward into a far more interesting examination of what The Cosby Show meant not only to her own childhood, but to Black America at large. Throughout each essay, Parker smartly returns to the theme of how Black women manage to exist in an American culture that sees them, at best, as inessential. Like her writing itself, Parker’s narration throughout this collection is witty, thoughtful, and captivating.