Nerd
Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) and Black Nerd Problems, this witty, incisive essay collection from New York Times critic at large Maya Phillips explores race, religion, sexuality, and more through the lens of her favorite pop culture fandoms.
From the moment Maya Phillips saw the opening scroll of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, her life changed forever. Her formative years were spent loving not just the Star Wars saga, but superhero cartoons, anime, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and Doctor Who—to name just a few.
As a critic at large at The New York Times, Phillips has written extensively on theater, poetry, and the latest blockbusters—with her love of some of the most popular and nerdy fandoms informing her career. Now, she analyzes the mark these beloved intellectual properties leave on young and adult minds, and what they teach us about race, gender expression, religion, and more.
Spanning from the nineties through to today, Nerd is a collection of cultural criticism essays through the lens of fandom for everyone from the casual Marvel movie watcher to the hardcore Star Wars expanded universe connoisseur. “In the same way that the fandoms Phillips addresses often provide community and a sense of connection, the experience of reading Nerd feels like making a new friend” (Karen Han, cultural critic and screenwriter).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Phillips (Erou) casts a keen eye, honed as a New York Times art critic, on the comics and cartoon figures that shaped her in this astute collection. In "The Animation Domination, Toonami, and Hellmouth High," she breaks down her fandom as her tastes evolved from superhero cartoons to teen horror, and recounts her father, exhausted from an overnight shift, settling in to watch TV with her: "These Saturday morning cartoons gave us a universe that was infinite." In "Moon Prism Power, Make Up!" Phillips explores anime's subversive representation of girlhood and queer relationships, and in the book's most affecting essay, "The Birth of a Black Hero," she grapples with her lifelong love of an art form that excluded her in its representation of the heroic—until, that is, she and her mother attend a screening of Black Panther in a Long Island theater: "I, a fan who had grown up seeing white heroes, saw a powerful and multifaceted depiction of Blackness. It felt like a homecoming." Sometimes Phillips's detailing of cartoon plots verges on encyclopedic, but for the most part, she keeps things brisk and is never short on sharp reflections. These sparkling essays demolish the boundaries between high and low art.
