One of the major themes of the book is how different people perceive the same situation. "I do believe that whenever race and class become issues that we naturally try to lighten the moment with a joke," said Reid. "That's where a lot of the awkwardness comes from - pushing away those topics because we don't want to believe in them." While Such a Fun Age does take aim at heavy subject matter, it's done with a lot of humour and levity. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement as well as her own experiences as a babysitter (although the story is not autobiographical), Reid wanted her novel to tackle "big socioeconomic issues" through a domestic lens because "those are the instances that we often think about before we go to bed at night." "I was really interested in crafting these incidences that don't end in violence, but still include a lot of trauma and the mental gymnastics of dealing with how to be a Black person in white spaces," Reid told q guest host Talia Schlanger on the line from Philadelphia. Jael Richardson's book pick: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.
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