Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America
Author: R. Eric Thomas
Publisher: Ballantine
View on Goodreads
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a poignant and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding his joy, and every awkward, extraordinary stumble along the way.
R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went — whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city — he found himself on the outside looking in.
In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents' house was an anomalous bright spot, and the verdant school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, about the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election as well as the seismic change that came thereafter. Ultimately, Eric seeks the answer to the ever more relevant question: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Eric finds the answers to these questions by re-envisioning what “normal” means, and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.
For fans of Samantha Irby, Michael Arceneaux, and David Sedaris, Here for It will resonate deeply and joyfully with everyone who has ever felt pushed to the margins, struggled with self-acceptance, or wished to shine more brightly in a dark world. Stay here for it — the future may surprise you.
TL;DR Review
Here for It is an honest, moving, funny memoir written in essays by a gay Black man. What else do you need to know?
For you if: You are looking for something that feels both important and hopeful. And/or, you are new to memoir.
Full Review
I read Here for It in less than 24 hours, on a Saturday at the beginning of Pride month and as Black Lives Matter protests surged across the country. And I actually think it was a great choice for that moment, as I looked for ways to both continue educating myself and recharge a little before jumping back into the antiracism fight.
Here For It is funny and hopeful, just like R. Eric Thomas — who writes “Eric Reads the News” for ELLE and inspired Maxine Waters’s nickname Auntie Maxine — is himself. It also gives us an honest look into his experiences as a gay Black man. This book is described as a memoir-in-essays, meaning it follows a loose memoir structure, moving forward in a mostly linear timeline through Thomas’s life, but each chapter could also stand on its own as an essay about one aspect of his life or his experience. Like any other great essay, each chapter focuses on some sort of device to help frame the takeaway.
And y’all: These essays were GREAT. I truly can’t pick a favorite. I wrote a short synopsis of each one in my reading journal as I went, and when I read back over it to write this review, I kept thinking, “Oh yeah, I loved that one!” But I think my favorites (plural) were “She’s Got Herself a Universe,” in which he talks about a friend from his high school years and uses all sorts of metaphors about people being like libraries; “Ball So Soft,” in which he talks about joining a gay softball league and learning to confront his own internalized homophobia and humor as a defensive mechanism; and “Here for It,” in which he talks about Pride, and how one can be warring with oneself and proud at the same time, and how that in itself is hopeful.
Also, I think this had the best nonfiction epilogue I have ever read. Truly, it was perfect.
Trigger Warnings
Racism
Homophobia
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