Book Club Prep: Such A Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

“A lot of white supremacy comes with a smile, an unknowingness and really great intentions.” – Kiley Reid

Kiley Reid’s bestselling & Booker Prize longlisted debut novel takes place in late 2015, with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on the periphery of the plot. The specters of the subsequent years inflect Reid’s rendering of race, class, domestic labor and the complex interplays of power and intimacy. The plot centers on Emira, a young Black woman who is working as a babysitter for a white family, while struggling to find both a calling and a job that provides benefits.

Sep 18, 2020 | #book club, #virtual

NYU Skirball Book Club: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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Talking Points

If you’re not sure where to start a conversation in a breakout room during Book Club, find an example in the text related to one of these themes. Or, pick a passage that stood out to you and share it with the group.

  • As Reid describes it: “In many ways, this is a very old story – a Black caregiver and a white woman and a white child”
  • The relation of villain/victim
  • Privilege, access, opportunity in relation to race & class
  • Belonging – in public spaces & personal identities
  • Following one’s passion/finding a higher calling, vs. paying the rent
  • That final paragraph! – innocence, childhood, forgiveness and responsibility

Get Into It

The Guardian

Interview with Kiley Reid

“Any conversation about race without bringing up class is a bit of a moot point,” Reid says… With issues of class, money and race at the front and centre of her novel, Reid says she feels lucky her editors didn’t push back. But publishers who want to reflect these complicated experiences have still got a long way to go.

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NPR

Review: Such A Fun Age

The title of Kiley Reid’s debut, Such a Fun Age, works on so many levels it makes me giddy — and, what’s better, the title’s plurality of meaning is echoed all over the place within the novel, where both plot and dialogue are layered with history, prejudice, expectations, and assumptions.

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Close Reading

Kelley Copeland […] could apparently acknowledge that he was dating a black woman, and that she could appreciate a good story over the need for decorum, but still . . . shouldn’t he have said “the N-word” instead? Maybe save the whole thing for the seventh or eighth date? Emira couldn’t tell. […] She wrestled with feeling moderately appalled that he had said the whole thing, with that painfully distinctive hard r sound at the end, but as she watched the veins in his hands move as he took a last bite, she settled on, You know what? Imma let you get away with that too. (93)

“I don’t know . . .” Emira struggled. “Lemme try to say this. […] I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like . . . happens.” (194)

There was something about the actual work, the practice of caring for a small unstructured person, that left Emira feeling smart and in control. There was the gratifying reflex of being good at your job, and even better was the delightful good fortune of having a job you wanted to be good at. […] One day, when Emira would say good-bye to Briar, she’d also leave the joy of having somewhere to be, the satisfaction of understanding the rules, the comfort of knowing what’s coming next, and the privilege of finding a home within yourself. (209)

Alex was alone, and the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best. (298)

Paula seemed disappointed in Emira’s contentment. “Good bosses shouldn’t make you happy in a job that they wouldn’t want to do themselves,” she said. “It’s my job to make you so miserable that you’re forced into finding something that brings you joy.” (302)

There was no way that she and Kelley would ever recover from the acknowledgment that he’d been right about Mrs. Chamberlain. Forming a relationship again would somehow dictate that he could be right about everything else, when really, he had a lot to learn. (303)

Deep into her thirties, Emira would wrestle with what to take from her time at the Chamberlain house. Some days she carried the sweet relief that Briar would learn to become a self-sufficient person. And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her. (305)