Scan barcode
A review by wolfeyreads
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
4.0
Content warnings: (provided by the author) discussion and depictions of mental illness, self-harm (scratching skin, nails digging into skin as anxiety coping mechanism), past suicide attempt by side character, depictions of anti-Blackness and homophobia in the academic and corporate settings, casual alcohol consumption, minor drug use (marijuana), discussions of racism experienced by all characters of color, past limb amputation due to war injury (side character), past parent death (side character).
Representation: (provided by Book Trigger Warning website) Black lesbian protagonist, Japanese-American lesbian love interest, Black side characters, Afro-Dominican-American side character, Indian-American side characters, trans side character.
"... sometimes you fight so hard to follow what you're supposed to do, but it's hard and you can't."
Review mentions self-harm.
"... sometimes you fight so hard to follow what you're supposed to do, but it's hard and you can't.”
I related to this so much. As a Black person, who entered academia in a white-dominated university, after I left I felt so exhausted, hurt, and lost.
Seeing Grace Porter go through the same thing, put into words I have had trouble speaking. For Grace, there is this need to be perfect, to be the best, because she has to be, to survive in this world, to climb in the way society thinks success looks like.
“There is only so much you can hold until you’re holding too much.”
When she graduates with her Ph.D. in astronomy without a job or plan, the anxiety and insecurities that she has learned to bury down come bubbling up at the surface. As someone who has self-harmed, I understood the lines, “Grace wonders, during school and work and the future-in-flux looming ahead, how long she can withstand the sting before it just--stops. How long she can burn before there’s nothing left. How long a thing can be buried before it combusts.” Sometimes what you bury comes out in different ways.
When she discovers that she married a woman on a drunken night in Vegas, she concludes that it was an accident, a moment where she lost control and threw her plans out the window. But it was at that moment where she was able to escape the pressures of trying to be the best and just live.
Honey Girl is a book written for every person who has ever felt like they are only worth what they can give to others and are feeling lost because they do not know where they are going.
Like so many people dealing with anxiety and depression who keep themselves busy by producing because they have to and stopping means that you are not good enough, Grace has been on “go” for so long and doesn’t know what slowing down can look like. And throughout the novel, she learns what is good for her, what she wants, and where she wants her future to go. And if that doesn’t look like what others expect of her, that’s okay, too.
Representation: (provided by Book Trigger Warning website) Black lesbian protagonist, Japanese-American lesbian love interest, Black side characters, Afro-Dominican-American side character, Indian-American side characters, trans side character.
"... sometimes you fight so hard to follow what you're supposed to do, but it's hard and you can't."
Review mentions self-harm.
"... sometimes you fight so hard to follow what you're supposed to do, but it's hard and you can't.”
I related to this so much. As a Black person, who entered academia in a white-dominated university, after I left I felt so exhausted, hurt, and lost.
Seeing Grace Porter go through the same thing, put into words I have had trouble speaking. For Grace, there is this need to be perfect, to be the best, because she has to be, to survive in this world, to climb in the way society thinks success looks like.
“There is only so much you can hold until you’re holding too much.”
When she graduates with her Ph.D. in astronomy without a job or plan, the anxiety and insecurities that she has learned to bury down come bubbling up at the surface. As someone who has self-harmed, I understood the lines, “Grace wonders, during school and work and the future-in-flux looming ahead, how long she can withstand the sting before it just--stops. How long she can burn before there’s nothing left. How long a thing can be buried before it combusts.” Sometimes what you bury comes out in different ways.
When she discovers that she married a woman on a drunken night in Vegas, she concludes that it was an accident, a moment where she lost control and threw her plans out the window. But it was at that moment where she was able to escape the pressures of trying to be the best and just live.
Honey Girl is a book written for every person who has ever felt like they are only worth what they can give to others and are feeling lost because they do not know where they are going.
Like so many people dealing with anxiety and depression who keep themselves busy by producing because they have to and stopping means that you are not good enough, Grace has been on “go” for so long and doesn’t know what slowing down can look like. And throughout the novel, she learns what is good for her, what she wants, and where she wants her future to go. And if that doesn’t look like what others expect of her, that’s okay, too.