Review by Booklist Review
In 2012, Ramsey's viral video Sh*t White Girls Say . . . to Black Girls launched her career in media, pushing her head first into conversations about race, gender, and privilege. For years, she had been making comedy videos and hair tutorials for YouTube while working as a graphic designer by day. After her video gained national attention, she received interview requests, secured an agent, and, with more hard work, began hosting the MTV series Decoded and joined the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore as a writer and commentator. Ramsey's memoir chronicles her growth towards activism as she learned more about how racism and other forms of oppression operate in the U.S. She addresses online call-out culture and offers guidance on how to effectively talk about often divisive issues. Ramsey's personal stories and lessons learned provide a window into today's online culture as well as tools for new activists. Regardless of their level of familiarity with Ramsey's work, readers will enjoy engaging with complex subjects via her frank, approachable style.--Chanoux, Laura Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The host of MTV's web series Decoded chronicles her difficulties navigating the early days of social media and her evolution as an advocate for social justice.Ramsey has a solid media platform: A comedian, actress, and blogger, she was a writer and correspondent for the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and Anderson Cooper 360. With a program in the works with Comedy Central, the author offers her story as an illustration of why, in today's overheated social and political environment, it is more important than ever to pay close attention to how we communicate with each other. Early on she admits that she is a product of social media: "I have a long and complicated history with the internet. I basically grew up online." She built her first website while still in middle school. By high school, she had purchased her own domain name and began blogging. Ramsey was an early fan of YouTube and began making videos for fun. "I know the exact date I went from being a nobody, minding my own business in my corporate retail job," she writes, "to being 'internet famous'--and inadvertently making a lot of girls cry." That moment came after she posted a video, "Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls," which went "super-massive, mainstream-news viral." Ramsey's narrative is a snappy mix of the funny, sad, and horrifying incidents that have shaped her life, many of which demonstrate lessons that can apply to a wide variety of modern-day readers. For the unwoke among us, Ramsey thoughtfully includes "Franchesca's Simple Explanations of Not-So-Simple Concepts," a "social-justice glossary" that includes definitions of such terms as "gender binary," "cisgender," "Latinx," and "Slacktivism."An admirable exploration of the rapidly morphing boundaries of social mores and online outrage; the author helpfully points the way toward better communication.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
