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savvylit's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.5
White Girls as a collection is a genuinely mixed bag. Some of the essays are interesting and well-written. Others are overly dense and bloated. When Als weaves the personal into his cultural criticism, that's when he really excels. The opening essay, Tristes Tropiques, is a beautiful testament to platonic soulmates. Later, Als profiles famous folks such as Eminem, Richard Pryor, and Flannery O'Connor. Those essays bring a fresh take on their subjects and I really enjoyed them.
I've had a hard time formulating this review and I think it's because I wanted to love this collection but the lack of cohesion really bothered me. The powerful memoir focus of the first essay is completely dropped afterward. The rest of the essays are then at an awkward and cold distance from the author-as-a-person. Not only that, but the second to last piece "You and Whose Army" is an experimental/fictional and rambling chunk of text that imagines the perspective of Richard Pryor's sister. Honestly, that piece absolutely lost me and I'm not sure what point was meant to be made.
Lastly, the primary conceit of this collection is that Als is analyzing "white girls" as an archetype. Some of the folks that he calls white girls are Truman Capote, Andre Leon Talley, Michael Jackson, and Louise Brooks. I can appreciate the way that Als attempts to turn racial analysis on its head by choosing this perspective. However, Als' analysis - which seems intended to be radical and surprising - was anything but. Rather, the idea of the white girls archetype is ultimately rooted in an archaically binary world: male/female and gay/straight. I found that to be somewhat old-fashioned and implied a book written in the 1990s, rather than only ten years ago in 2013. Essentially, this collection as a whole has not aged well at all.
I've had a hard time formulating this review and I think it's because I wanted to love this collection but the lack of cohesion really bothered me. The powerful memoir focus of the first essay is completely dropped afterward. The rest of the essays are then at an awkward and cold distance from the author-as-a-person. Not only that, but the second to last piece "You and Whose Army" is an experimental/fictional and rambling chunk of text that imagines the perspective of Richard Pryor's sister. Honestly, that piece absolutely lost me and I'm not sure what point was meant to be made.
Lastly, the primary conceit of this collection is that Als is analyzing "white girls" as an archetype. Some of the folks that he calls white girls are Truman Capote, Andre Leon Talley, Michael Jackson, and Louise Brooks. I can appreciate the way that Als attempts to turn racial analysis on its head by choosing this perspective. However, Als' analysis - which seems intended to be radical and surprising - was anything but. Rather, the idea of the white girls archetype is ultimately rooted in an archaically binary world: male/female and gay/straight. I found that to be somewhat old-fashioned and implied a book written in the 1990s, rather than only ten years ago in 2013. Essentially, this collection as a whole has not aged well at all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Racism, and Homophobia
Moderate: Racial slurs
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