“Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.”
This is another book I read because, as I like to call it, "Bookstagram Made Me Do It" — my second this week, in fact! I have three friends to thank for this one.
Intimations is a 100+-page collection of short essays by Smith. I’m a fan of her fiction and don’t normally read essays very often, but I was fascinated by her take on our world as it has been affected by COVID-19.
Her essays fascinated me, serving as a source of amusement and inspiration as much as they made me think. She talks about the compelling need to always be doing something that has been exacerbated even more since the pandemic. She talks about anger, privilege, race, relationships, economics, psychology. She even touches on why so many writers love addressing the question of why they choose to write.
But it is the essay that serves as the postscript, “Contempt as a Virus,” that was the most impactful for me. In it she equates COVID with the plague of racism, particularly following the murder of George Floyd. In just a few pages she communicates so powerfully.
“Has America metabolized contempt? Has it lived with the virus so long that it no longer fears it? Is there a strong enough desire for a different America within America?”
If you’re looking for a thought-provoking piece, this is a book for you. Smith is donating all the royalties to charity, so you’re doing a good deed, too, in purchasing this.
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