Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Oh my goodness, this book is really great.  If you are having some fatigue getting through the myriad of well written and thought out books about the origins and manifestations of systemic racism in the United States, this is a parallel way to see what's going on.  The title itself gives you a sense of what you are in for.  I works on quite a few levels.  The meaning is echoed all over the place within the novel, where both plot and dialogue are layered with history, prejudice, expectations, and assumptions. Fun age might refer to the main characters, Emira Tucker, a 25-year-old black woman who keenly feels that working part-time as a babysitter and part-time as a typist is not cutting it.  She will soon be 26 and she needs a job that comes with health insurance, and she is no where near having that. It might also refer to her charge, Briar, a white three-year-old whose imagination and speech patterns are so charmingly true to a particular kind of kid that she's instantly recognizable. More broadly, the "fun age" might be our own, prior to the 2016 election — an age that was naively considered by some to be magically post-racist and post-sexist because it was impolite to be these things in public; an age of performative white feminism; an age of social media and the potential for small things to go viral and armchair activism and online virtue-signaling that ironically requires certain people — often, those already more vulnerable — to exist in specific politically correct ways while letting others — usually, those with power and privilege — off the hook.  I will end with the title of another great book.  This is where I leave you.