memoir-in-essays are generally appealing to me and this one was pretty good! i do think JPB has some genuinely thoughtful and well-meaning advice to give through these chapters. there were some bits i was pleasantly surprised by.

i have two main critiques, one surface-level and one more significant. because he writes an advice column, each chapter is formatted as such, beginning with a (maybe faux or heavily clipped?) letter from a reader. through the whole rest of the chapter, JPB will randomly insert the letter’s sign-off into a sentence or seven. and every time, it threw me off, bc the tone of each essay is really more memoir than advice column to me. it was just a mildly irritating writing quirk that i’m sure some people enjoy but was just not for me. regardless that alone wouldn’t put this at a 4-star.

what did is that pretty often, JPB gives advice or comes to some grand conclusion that is /SO CLOSE/ to being something radical or truly politically meaningful, and then it just doesn’t happen. at one point he very clearly describes the invisible knapsack conception of white privilege, but then just moves on and writes about smth else. it’s definitely possible that he came up with the same ideas himself, but it’s an idea that dates back to 1980s antiracism so to read it as if it’s novel was odd. there were a few other similar instances that all just made me think “no!! u were so close to something really good!!!!”

I know i’m a very critical reader but cmon, just a /little/ more radical, please?