THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL

Musings on the South Asian author’s marriage to a Black writer, popular culture, and more.

About two-thirds of the way into this meandering collection, Sharma writes about attending a writing workshop at a bookstore. “I don’t have anything to write about. All I have been doing is wedding things,” she worries. “How about writing about those wedding things?” suggests her fiance, Quincy. Unfortunately, the author’s storytelling urge never gets much more urgent than that. It’s not that she has nothing to say about their interracial relationship, which Sharma frames in the context of allyship, but there’s not much forward momentum in its unfolding. They watched Mississippi Masala, about a similar love; later, they became fans of The Walking Dead. Sharma braids her discussion of the death of a popular Asian character on the latter with a review of the facts in the 1982 hate-motivated murder of Vincent Chin. This examination connects to discussion of more recent hate crimes, including the shootings of Asians in Atlanta and George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. We take a slight detour into the author’s history with improv comedy and emerge to discuss the Lovings and their “almost decade-long fight for their interracial marriage.” Then, back to the 2011 wedding, then back to Floyd, and then a chapter titled “We Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny That Kamala Harris Is Our Time Traveling Daughter.” This chapter is largely about the freezing and maintenance of Sharma’s eggs, leaping back and forth through a timeline stretching from 1958 to 2022. The author also includes her sharply funny 2019 essay, “Shithole Country Clubs,” which was inspired by her father’s membership at Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf club, and she salts the text liberally with jokes and wisecracks. (Nina: “Is there anyone like a ‘rich activist’?” Quincy: “Batman.”)

The path of allyship unfolds, with some gems along the way.