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Jill Louise Busby

Autore di Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity

1 opera 65 membri 4 recensioni

Opere di Jill Louise Busby

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Really interesting and vulnerable in a grudging way. I have a different relationship to socials, maybe everything social, and appreciate getting to be an observer in a very different experience, even if I was in some ways lost.
 
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Kiramke | 3 altre recensioni | Jan 25, 2024 |
Memoir -- essays. Challenging for a white male liberal boomer (me), but ultimately worth the effort. And yes, the title is explained, but not until the end. I recommend against skipping ahead.
 
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Michael_Lilly | 3 altre recensioni | Apr 16, 2022 |
This incredible essay collection both reflects and rejects the ever-present "white gaze" and its impact on Black people. Jillisblack goes viral with an Instagram video that gathers 30k likes and a million Facebook views. With that success, she BECOMES Jillisblack, scourge of liberals, but is also a gay Black woman who resents her inability to "wait any more without checking my phone". As her social media life blows up, she and her mother become diversity and inclusion trainers at corporations that pretend to listen and then do nothing, and she resents her dependence on the approval of those in power who provide financial gratification, avoiding examination of their own advantages and playing paralyzed when it comes to actually working towards equity. She's in a very frustrating position and, in this book, shares her public posts and private anguish and shame. The most dramatic section is Jill’s time spent at a coastal retreat for Black “creatives”, feeling her usual ambivalence about being funded by a liberal foundation “right on the edge of a retro downtown and a seemingly limitless sea”, while accepting the performative role. for This is an eye-opening reveal that is a necessary read for all activists and allies.

Quotes: "We live in a world that quickly reduces you to either an exception or the rule."

"Social media archives what it has noticed about you, for when you betray it.”

“You walk around the theater down the hall, the one that’s so grand and dark and exciting that you almost can’t stand it.”

“You would still rather be at home, talking about the world, than in the world, talking about home.”

“You sleep in a hotel room with eight other people, who, like you, think they have all their own ideas. In that moment, your ideas agree and it’s a massive relief – the first moment of relief from shared ideas that you ever have.”

“Many of the alternative capitalists, egalitarian egomaniacs, and old school hippiecrites are desperate for the good old days when their gripes were the most progressive, angry that they could get something wrong now and quickly become the enemy of the later generations of themselves.”

“What if I could build a world that protects me from my own insecurities?”

“Hey, white people! Please look at us so that it counts, because it doesn’t count unless you’re seeing it. [LIKE THE CHILD AT THE SWIMMING POOL, CALLING TO THEIR MOM - ELM] You are the call to our response.”
… (altro)
 
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froxgirl | 3 altre recensioni | Sep 29, 2021 |
Unfollow Me by Jill Louise Busby (Jillisblack) is a moving (in more ways than I ever anticipated) memoir that also offers an excellent glimpse into what passes for discourse in this time of short videos and even shorter tweets. You won't agree with every point she makes as Jillisblack but that isn't really the point, does anyone ever actually agree with everything someone else says? We usually don't agree with ourselves when we look back.

What Busby does exceptionally well is to show what went into the "letters" that gave her her fame, both in her past and in the present of those letters. Ultimately we come to appreciate Jillisblack as that part of any of us that might speak hyperbolically when making a valid point, that might be more confrontational than necessary because we are often met with confrontation. We wear masks, or read different scripts, for different parts of our lives and we lose sight of where we end and the character we play begins. Or, more accurately, where and how much they overlap in that area where they morph from one to the other. When one of our masks/scripts/characters gain enough attention, it is like a separate entity completely and we have to make a concerted effort to make sure we are still comfortable with that role.

If you read this and don't argue with Jillisblack at least a little then I have to wonder if you understand the nuance in life that makes someone like Jillisblack so valuable. Her shedding of nuance to highlight the glaring ugliness of so much of society is, or should be, the starting point for her followers, not the endpoint and final understanding. It is when Busby has to decide how well Jillisblack is representing what she now wants to say that we really can distinguish between the two. Both have powerful messages, yet they are not always in sync with how they convey those messages. Whether you follow or not, the messages are important for you to wrestle with, in all of your various scripted roles.

I would recommend this not only to those who want to understand what Jillisblack was saying but also those who want to understand how such a scripted role can get, if not out of control, at least unwieldy. Fame, large or small, presents as many problems as it solves. Coming to terms with it can make the vast majority of the effects positive, and I think Busby has a solid grasp of her situation.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
… (altro)
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pomo58 | 3 altre recensioni | Jul 8, 2021 |

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Opere
1
Utenti
65
Popolarità
#261,994
Voto
4.0
Recensioni
4
ISBN
2

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