Just finished this book in time for Ace Week! I have been looking forward to this since I found out early this year that Brown got a book deal and was releasing this. It’s a really amazing book, I’ve been tweeting about it as I go through and it’s been a great experience.
The book is written in a really accessible way, while still getting into deeper ideas and themes. All of the chapters are relatively short, and they open with a quick anecdote or illustration of the topic. This would actually make it work quite well as a series of essays, where you can separate out the chapters.
As you can tell from the title, it focuses a lot on race, and how particularly Black individuals are hypersexualized and fetishized. Many people doubt that Black aces exist because of this, and the book is a really strong reclamation of this identity. Brown in particular focuses on the experiences of Black women, and I think reading this text will be so powerful for that demographic.
My favorite chapter was probably the one on asexuality with historical characters. In it Brown goes into two historically queer, Black figures and creates the argument that they could be read as asexual. However, she doesn't go so far as to force the label on them and put them into this box. Instead she simply creates the space for them to be read as such and that space in and of itself is undeniably queer and ace. Which I agree wholeheartedly with, it was great to see this spelled out while nodding my head vigorously.
This is an excellent read regardless of your orientation, race, or gender. It's so important to understand others' experiences and how these ideas have shaped the way you see others. I hope that there's more books like this on the way, this is hopefully only the beginning of this exploration.
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