{ "item_title" : "The Way You Make Me Feel", "item_author" : [" Nina Sharma "], "item_description" : "Remarkable . . . The Way You Make Me Feel affirms that Black and Brown existence in America comes with no guarantee of collective solidarity, no innate promise of racial equality. The path to justice is uncertain, Sharma reminds us, and we must each work hard--and be bold enough to sacrifice our own comfort--to actualize it. --Washington PostA hilarious and moving memoir in essays about love and allyship, told through one Asian and Black interracial relationship When Nina Sharma meets Quincy while hitching a ride to a friend's Fourth of July barbecue, she spots a favorite book, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, in the back seat of his cramped car, and senses a sadness from him that's all too familiar to her. She is immediately intrigued--who is this man? In The Way You Make Me Feel, Sharma chronicles her and Quincy's love story, and in doing so, examines how their Black and Asian relationship becomes the lens through which she moves through and understands the world. In a series of sensual and sparkling essays, Sharma reckons with caste, race, colorism, and mental health, moving from her seemingly idyllic suburban childhood through her and Quincy's early sweeping romance in the so-called postracial Obama years and onward to their marriage. Growing up, she hears her parents talk about the racism they experienced at the hands of white America--and as an adult, she confronts the complexities of American racism and the paradox of her family's disappointment when she starts dating a Black man. While watching The Walking Dead, Sharma dives into the eerie parallels between the brutal death of Steven Yeun's character and the murder of Vincent Chin. She examines the trailblazing Mira Nair film Mississippi Masala, revolutionary in its time for depicting a love story between an Indian woman and a Black man on screen, and considers why interracial relationships are so often assumed to include white people. And as she and Quincy decide whether to start a family, they imagine a universe in which Vice President Kamala Harris could possibly be their time-traveling daughter. Written with a keen critical eye and seamlessly weaving in history, pop culture, and politics, The Way You Make Me Feel reaffirms the idea that allyship is an act of true love.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/349/282/059349282X_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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In a time of rising anti-Asian hate and a renewal of anti-Black racism, Black and brown solidarity is of critical importance. Political pundits and activists alike have emphasized the urgency of financial, political and even ecological unity among these various ethnic and cultural groups. But in The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown, Nina Sharma calls for another type of Afro-Asian solidarity. In 16 bold, rich essays, Sharma unfurls the chronicle of her love affair with a Black man named Quincy. (Some readers will immediately recognize the dreadlocked man as Quincy Scott Jones, author of poetry collection The T-Bone Series.) Here, we journey to the center of a love story that is as much about romance as it is about Sharma’s Indian identity and wrestling with anti-Blackness.

Sharma adds color and nuance to her essays by braiding TV reviews with cultural commentary and memoir. In the powerful “Not Dead,” she discusses her experience watching “The Walking Dead” and analyzes one particular episode—the one in which the only Asian character in the series, a Korean American father-to-be named Glenn, is killed. She writes of her emotional journey following that episode, how she struggled to eat the meal Quincy lovingly made: “Our Sunday ritual. It wasn’t that my hunger was gone. I’d just had enough.” The episode made her think about another murdered Asian American man, real-life Vincent Chin, who was bludgeoned to death in Detroit in 1982. With grace and grit, she enters the narratives of these two individuals, and uses them to consider her own mortality as a South Asian American. 

But in the main, this is a book about love. Sharma shows us that she’s got range, moving seamlessly from a discussion about racism on a national scale to making out with Quincy, for example. Readers will appreciate Sharma’s diaristic recounting of their lovers’ spats and her reflections on the central tension in their relationship: that in the American caste system, a Black man and Indian woman simply do not fit any accepted narrative. 

With writing that is at once humorous and profound, The Way You Make Me Feel confronts the paradoxical realities of race and the family, and calls for greater solidarity by way of love.