Reflections on Self-Delusion
by Jia Tolentino
Published: 2019
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Essays, Memoir, Feminism
Hardback: 303
Rating: 5
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Website
Includes:
The I in the Internet
Reality TV Me
Always Be Optimizing
Pure Heroines
Ecstasy
The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams
We Come from Old Virginia
The Cult of the Difficult Women
I Thee Dread
First sentence(s):
I wrote this book between the spring of 2017 and the fall of 1018--a period during which American identity, culture, technology, politics, and discourse seemed to coalesce ito an unbearable supernova of perpetually escalating conflict, a stretch of time when daily experience seemed both like a stopped elevator and an endless state-fair ride, when many of us regularly found ourselves thinking that everything had gotten as bad as we could possibly imagine, after which, of course, things always got worse."
Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.
My two-bits:
Thoughtful collection of the sign of the times in regards to women.
Topics range from internet, reality tv, women heroines in books, etc.
* Filipino mentioned
