Review by Booklist Review
Following the success of We're Going to Need More Wine (2017), actress Union returns with more wise, intimate personal stories, welcoming readers back into her life and family with all the candor and wit of her first memoir. She shares her experiences with infertility, her decision to have her daughter, Kaavia James, via surrogate, and her journey through difficult hormonal imbalances her entire adult life. She further opens up about her role as stepparent to husband Dwyane Wade's children, particularly their transgender teenage daughter, Zaya. There's talk of compassionate strippers in Atlanta and neo-Nazis in Croatia, and plenty of Hollywood lore, including a dance battle with Bruno Mars (Serena Williams' was on Union's squad). Opening up about playing the iconic role of Isis in Bring It On, Union reveals that, because the original screenwriting was so rife with stereotype, she found herself with a great deal of improvisational control. She also gives advice about finding success in the entertainment industry. The respect with which she writes about the people in her life is a true testament to her character. Always smart, inviting, and generous with emotion, Union's second exquisite memoir reads like a conversation with your most enlightened, thoughtful friend.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Union's zillions of fans (18.5 million Instagram followers and counting) combined with the success of her first book point to massive demand for her second.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The star actor and producer demonstrates her dedication to empowering young Black women and other marginalized people. Union and her husband, former NBA superstar Dwyane Wade, are a Black American celebrity couple the media loves to follow. In the first and longest essay, "Loved Even as a Thought," the author chronicles the couple's pregnancy via surrogacy. Although Union first considered their decision to use a gestational carrier a "walk away from home plate," the strategy paid off with the birth of Kaavia James. The Hollywood veteran is candid in her admission that, ultimately, she was a "character actress" in her daughter's "one-woman show." In the rest of the book, Union offers her takes on Hollywood parties, auditions, family dramas, and "how-to" advice for making it in "the industry" for aspiring young people of color. Regarding feedback, she writes, "Examine it and decide what you're gonna take and what you're gonna discard." The author also writes charmingly and instructively about the many "bonding stepmother-stepdaughter moments" she has shared with her gender-nonconforming stepdaughter, and she shares an entertaining anecdote about inadvertently getting on Janet Jackson's bad side--but don't worry, Janet is now "the friend who reminds me to set my clocks back." Union exposes gender problems in work life ("Balance is a lie" since the system "is rigged against women") and rails against blackface and blackfishing, which entails non-Black people "stealing the looks and features of Blackness for profit." While recounting the devastating rape she suffered when she was 19, the author describes how she found recovery and emotional support through watching Black Olympians triumph in the 1992 Summer Olympic. "I needed a lifeline," she writes, "and what I saw was unapologetic Black stardom and perseverance." Throughout, Black excellence is cast as the antidote to racism and other societal poisons. As these essays ably show, Union is a dynamic role model for young Black women in all walks of life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
