this will be my undoing by morgan jerkins

With this collection, she shows us that she is unforgettably here, a writer to be reckoned with.” - Roxane Gay The last line of the book reads, ‘You should’ve known I was coming,’ and indeed, in this, too, Jerkins is prescient.

Her prodigious intellect and curiosity are on full display throughout this outstanding collection. From one essay to the next, Jerkins weaves the personal with the public and political in compelling, challenging ways. “In Morgan Jerkins’s remarkable debut essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing, she is a deft cartographer of black girlhood and womanhood. Indeed, is a book I wish everyone in this country would read.” - New York Times Book Review “Without turning linguistic or lyrical cartwheels, Jerkins lucidly articulates social dynamics that have dictated the realities of American black women for centuries…. Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well the white, male-dominated world at large. In the spirit of Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, This Will Be My Undoing takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”-to live as, to exist as-a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans.ĭoubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality.

This will be my undoing by morgan jerkins