Katrina Spencer

Unbeweavable addresses many issues that we unfortunately hate to talk about in black America. Houston native Mariah Stevens spent her childhood as the dark skin, nappy-headed girl earning her the nickname, Cotton Ball. However, Mariah’s sister Renee fared better in the skin and hair department. She had long wavy hair and light skin. It didn’t help that their mother, Beverly was the culprit to instigate and reinforce the negative stenotypes.

As a child and later during her adolescent years, Mariah never seemed to get a grip on her hair issues. Her mother didn’t know what to do and never made a real effort to find a stylist who specialized in kinky tresses. But lo and behold, one day Mariah would discover hair weave and all her prayers would be answered. Well not all, but you know what I mean.

So at age 29, Mariah is away from Houston and living her life in Manhattan. She’s a book review editor at Spirit Magazine after starting out as an intern. She's living "the" life. She rocks a $3K weave sew-in and wouldn’t trade her exquisite $3K per month apartment for nothing in the world. Not a thang. Now let’s not forget her banging haute and chic wardrobe. Mariah truly is living the good life even though she can’t always afford food.

While living in dreamland and treating people like doo-doo, Mariah misses all the signs that Spirit is folding. You guessed it, RECESSION. It didn’t help that she had no friends at work, so she even missed the office-gossip and rumors. Now Mariah has no job or savings. All that’s left is her hair weave, fashion duds and bachelorette pad.

Unbeweavable was a pretty quick and easy read. I was drawn in almost instantly to Mariah and her uber-bitchedness. The only thing that mattered to Mariah was work. I guess that made sense, being that life had already failed her in the family department. Her mother was a complete bitch when it came to supporting Mariah and treating her with the same love and care as her other daughter. Beverly made it clear to Mariah that she needed to stay in her books because she wasn’t wifey material. Beverly often reminded her, "Not every woman is made to be a wife. Career first.”

I guess yall know I didn’t like Beverly. She was color struck as we say down South. Imagine her as a mother while dealing with taunts and jokes from other cruel kids. I know right. I eventually softened up toward Mariah and realized her state of bitchedness was due to dealing with Beverly for a mother and living in a world that condoned racism within a race. It later came out that Beverly had her own drama and issues to deal with but instead of dealing with her own problems, she verbally abused and neglected her daughter.

Now after really liking this book, when I got to page 284 my whole perspective started to change. Mariah and Renee took a road trip to Memphis. Yes, my stomping grounds. Everything was cool until the character Gloria came into the picture. Gloria loved her some fried chicken skin, fried corn, even Oreos fried in butter. I was literally disgusted. No really, I was mad as hell. To understand my gripe, you would have to be a true Memphian. As a city, Memphis has so many negative and often times untrue stereotypes that it’s crazy. For instance, that we all are ignorant, can’t read, speak with Ebonics, and the list goes on and on. So when I read the line, “Ever since the doctor said I was a diabetical…,” I was really cursing. Some of yall might say, it isn’t that serious but to me, IT IS! Memphis is a metropolitan area not the country or rural area. We have TIVO's in Memphis, Katrina.

My whole point is, for someone to write a book addressing stereotypes and to then create stereotypes disguised as scenery, I was flabbergasted. Everything that the book initially brought to the forefront went out the window for me: the realness, the issues, everything. But then I wondered if she knew anyone in Memphis that fried Oreos so I asked.


Notorious Spinks:

Katrina,

I’m working on your book review and I have some questions. Do you or have your ever lived in Memphis. Or do you by any chance have any family in Memphis. I’m wondering because I was quite intrigued by the scene were Gloria was frying Oreos in butter and some other things that occurred in your Memphis scenes. Are these things that you have seen happen in Memphis or was it just intended to be comedy?

Thanks and I am anxiously awaiting your response.
Spinks


Katrina's reply:

Yolanda,
That's funny that you ask I don't have any friends or family in memphis. The frying thing was just part of my imagination. I'm from Houston and we have a big rodeo here every year. They have all kinds of carnival food-and everything is fried-fried pickles, fried snickers, even fried ice cream! (Don't ask me how they make that one.)

So a big part of Gloria's diet was an ode to carnival food, (hence the funnel cakes for breakfast). It was all meant for entertainment and I hope it didn't offend. That wasn't my intention at all!

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Well Katrina as you see, it was NOT and is NOT funny to me. Maybe you should have made up a city or even created the scene in another part of Houston or how about Dallas? Now that would be funny, haha.

Last thing, some facts didn’t work for me. For instance, on page 191, Mariah’s grandmother Porsche had died some years ago from diabetes. Yes, she was "diabetical." Then on page 213, she made grandpa promise to tell Mariah the truth. But, on page 320, Porsche was already dead when Mariah’s mother and father got together, before Mariah was born. You get my drift.

Well, that is all. Overall, it was a good book 60% of the time. If you’re not from Memphis you might even enjoy the whole thing. But as for me…… (plus d'informations)