Facebook, Twitter, AND Instagram tag from Dia: “Let’s read MISADVENTURES OF AWKWARD BLACK GIRL, Moreau. I have my book and everything.”
After recovering from shock that Dia actually went out and bought a book, I replied, “Okay.” I couldn’t let her show me up in the reading department, let alone the diverse books reading department.
Fast forward a month. We met for cocktails and I said, “I just finished Awkward Black Girl.”
Dia said, “I haven’t even started it.”
I see how it is.
Now we couldn’t talk about all the things I’d been dying to talk about.
Like the hair thing:
“The sad fact that I was willing to damage my own God-given hair before wearing it out in public was not lost on me.”
Been there.
The fashion thing:
“And whenever we’d go out, either collectively or one-on-one, it was pretty clear that I was the ‘confidence booster’ friend, the one girl in the group that you look at and think, ‘Well, at least I look better than her.’”
The “confidence booster”— yeah, that was me in high school, in college, and my first many times clubbing.
The dance thing:
“. . . my self-imposed eight-day course to learn how to dance required watching every music video with close attention to detail.”
Absolutely. Absofreakinglutely. I still do that.
Last but not least, Issa Rae’s crisis of the soul moment that led to her inspiration for the Awkward Black Girl concept in the fist place. (You have to read the book for that one. Hee hee.)
“Give me two weeks,” Dia said.
Next time we meet for cocktails, the first words out of my mouth will be . . . .
Shannon Yvonne Moreau 