The Trouble With Chick Lit.

I picked up this book from the Bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble yesterday. Yall know I have problems up to my ears with chick lit, but this was taglined, “A Modern Hip Hop Love Story,” so it seemed to be right up my alley. Now I’m up to page 15 and I can’t bear to read another sentence.

I swear to you I’m not a book snob. Really, I’m not! My bookcase is overflowing with all kinds of garbage, and none of them are classics. But I seem to have so much trouble with chick-lit. I remember trying to read Dirty Girls Social Club on hardcover and it was the first and only book I hated so much past the first few pages that I absolutely had to return it and get my money back. We all read books to a certain point and put them down with the intention of finishing them, and I swear I’ve tried to give chick lit novels a fair shot, but most of the time I barely get past a chapter or two before it becomes too painful for me to continue reading.

In the first fourteen pages of So Fly, Sophie has already graduated college, moved from Michigan to New York, regretted her decision, found an apartment, landed a job at a magazine, and finally had gotten so burnt out she had to find another avenue. It moves way too quickly for my taste, and really nothing has been revealed about Sophie as a person besides the fact that she has size 10 feet and loves music. And still, I know how terribly unfair it is for me to be so harsh on this book cause isn’t this the way all chick lit moves?

And since she seems to be going the Brown Sugar/High Fidelity route with this book, what about the first time this girl heard a beat that made her tingle? Or the live performance that moved her to tears? What about the first time she heard Wu Tang on a static-y radio and knew she had to cop that shit before she even knew who it was? What about the first time she heard Rakim and realized nobody had a command over the English language at that time like him? I don’t know, maybe I haven’t given the book enough time but I haven’t felt the love as of yet.

The strange thing — and Nicole had once pointed this out to me, so I swear I’m not trying to be obnoxious — is that many chick-lit novels seem to closely mirror my own life: single, educated girl who moves away from home to pursue her big dream in a big city, which usually involves being employed at a magazine of some sort. And I think that’s part of what annoys me so much. I consider myself very lucky to be where I am, and I hate that the life I’m living comes off so simple in these pages.

I know it’s wrong of me to judge because I’ve never actually finished a chick lit book, but there are all sorts of issues they gloss over in books like these. There’s race and gender, for one. And it’s important cause given my background as an Asian American girl, I’m sure I never would’ve gotten the chance I did to leave home and pursue my desired career if my own mom had not worked her ass off in the corporate world and cultivated an acute understanding of how hard it is for a woman of color to make it on her own. There’s also the reality of working in publishing/entertainment, and how it took me a year of unpaid hustlin and grindin to finally get the chance to work for peanuts, not to mention the ridiculous harassment I got on a daily basis about my looks and weight (I’m 5’3″ and 110 lbs). And what about the bill collectors and the weeks upon weeks of ramen noodles for three meals a day, all to pursue the dream? That’s real talk, man.

All of chick lit is considered “light, beach reading,” but I’ve got real things to say. Am I doomed to write fluffy, read-in-one-sitting, mindless, throwaway stories for the rest of my life? I can write a better book, if only I weren’t so lazy.

Tagged as: books