April 15, 2023
An interrogation of movies, TV, and music and their impact through the lens of a Black millennial. In this debut collection of lively essays, Harris, co-host of NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour," ranges from topics such as how to critique Black art and the cultish behavior of superfans, aka stans, to how parenthood and the desire to have children are depicted on-screen. The author shows how pop culture narrowly depicts Black and brown people and lays out the entertainment industry's uneven transformation to more equitable representation. The strongest essays are the personal ones, such as "I'm a Cool Girl," which shows how Harris took her cues on dating from romantic comedies such as Sleepless in Seattle and She's Gotta Have It, featuring the powerful protagonist Nola. "I'm drawn to her," writes the author, "because she's emanating domination and superiority, wielding the quintessential Brooklyn artist life in the kind of vast, chic, exposed-brick Fort Greene loft that no twenty-something could afford today without self-identifying as a trust-fund baby, influencer, or both." Later, Harris speaks to how she was often the only Black girl in her friend group and how she just "wanted desperately to blend in and bury the inescapable self-awareness of being The Only One at a time in my life when existing as anyone already really, really sucks to begin with." In some of the more academic essays, the author cites numerous studies, articles, and opinion pieces, which can feel like padding in an already-slim book. Furthermore, since pop culture contains many genres and is always expanding, one wonders whether many of the current TV shows, movies, and songs Harris references will be remembered by readers in five years. Still, this collection offers a thoughtful and incisive discussion on how pop culture, whether intentional or not, influences the way we move in the world. A vibrant, well-researched view on how current pop culture both reflects and informs our society.

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Starred review from April 24, 2023
“Pop culture shapes us, and we shape it right back in an invigorating feedback loop of creativity and interpretation,” contends Harris, host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, in her refreshing debut, which reflects on the music, movies, and TV shows that have had a formative impact on her life. In “Isn’t She Lovely?” Harris recounts how as a teenager she took pains to tell people she was named after a lyric in the Stevie Wonder song and not Another Bad Creation’s 1990 hit “Iesha,” lamenting that this impulse was driven by internalized anti-Blackness and her desire to distance herself from the “unusual Black” spelling, which she feared would mark her as “ghetto.” Harris is an astute observer of the artist/audience relationship, as when she suggests that fans pressure artists to become politically outspoken because fans construct their own identities around their cultural tastes, and so wish for their fandom to express their values. Other pieces explore the racist pushback against casting a Black actor as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid and the lack of narrative closure offered by the endless parade of Hollywood reboots, remakes, and prequels, serving up insightful perspectives in animated prose that affirm Harris’s status as a first-rate cultural critic. As incisive as they are entertaining, these essays are a treat.

May 15, 2023
In her debut essay collection, Harris tackles her relationship to the American pop culture landscape. She questions the infinitely complex ways that media can be absorbed, and how representations of race, romance, and friendship can have lasting effects on an unsuspecting audience. Harris balances her insights as a cultural critic with reflections on her youth. Once a Black kid growing up in the '90s, and a young woman during the rapid expansion of fandom culture, she dissects the evolution of mainstream media into a more diverse, all-consuming, and divisive force than ever. Over the course of nine essays, Harris provides a solid overview on how conversations around race, gender, and nostalgia have evolved since the early 2000s. But it's likely that her target audience--her peers, the Millennials who've broadcasted the bulk of their creative and personal lives over the Internet--have heard these arguments before. Wannabe is better suited as an entry point for young adults, or those just starting to explore pop culture criticism as a topic of interest.

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