You Get What You Pay For

Informationen zum Autor Morgan Parker Klappentext "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 her battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyper-awareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In this collection of sharp, reflective essays, Parker examines America's cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages, through such topics as the Church's role in propagating segregation through scriptural misreadings, 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"-- Leseprobe Start at the Beginning The first thing you're supposed to do is introduce yourself. If people don't know who they're encountering, they won't know how to perform the encounter. At which tenor, in what pitch, with how much respect. People are always saying start at the beginning, which must be some sort of sick joke. We love linear narratives, the smooth waters of sequential order. But it's too clean. I was early by weeks. The story goes that when she went into labor, my mom thought the waterbed broke. This was 1987. The story goes that my dad, still drunk on Tanqueray from Mom's office Christmas party, drove her to the hospital two towns over, where I proceeded to change my mind about this whole enterprise, and kept my mother in labor for double-­digit hours, as my dad experienced what I can only imagine was the worst and weirdest hangover of his life. They cut me out, let me incubate for a few weeks, and when it was determined that I was fully formed, I got started. I was early and then late, hesitating at the door. Ten days after my birth, Prozac made its first appearance in the United States of America. Just after my twelfth birthday, all the clocks would set back to zero. We were living in the End Times, my teachers said. Everything was a sign: Y2K, Britney Spears, homosexuals, Marilyn Manson. Clearly the Earth was falling apart, and if the Rapture was nigh one thousand years ago, any day could be my last to prove myself worthy. On my eighth-­grade picture day, a plane would crash into a building I'd never heard of in New York City, and we'd get the day off to pray. I'm pretty sure the United States has been at war for my entire life. I belong to a particular subcategory of millennials who searched library card drawers to research a paper to write by hand in cursive, and who only got a Nokia phone in middle school for emergencies or rides home after play practice. For us, first there was slime and Spice Girls and Pogs (anec­dotally, now flagged for spell check), and patriotism was Michael Jordan and Kerri Strug, and our president played the saxophone. There were devil worshippers in suburban parks at night and El Niño winds in the morning and razors in Halloween candy. There was so much money, frivolous money­speedboats and liposuction and shoes that lit up. Then, it was the end of the calendar as we knew it and maybe the end of the world. Then, it was the end of democracy, because of the Arabs, all of whom were terrorists, maybe; and patriotism was obligatory, and our president's abhorrent grammar mistakes filled daily quote calendars. There were celebrity sex tapes and school shootings and machine gun videogames. You could be famous for no reason, and everyone had computer rooms, and we replaced our after-­school phone calls with Instant Messenger. Then there was no money, and people lost their houses, and we were still at war. The banks owned us, it turned out, and the whole thing had been ab...

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Morgan Parker

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The award-winning author of Magical Negro traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

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.

Résumé
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.