Hello. This one is not scripted, so this is going to be fun. [In Portuguese]: Why are you crying?!
Yes, hi! I tried to do a book look inspired make-up look for The Henna
Wars. That did not go well. I also wanted to wear a Brazil soccer team t-shirt but uh,
both the soccer team t-shirt and the national symbols were appropriated by
the far-right in Brazil and now it signifies, you know, racism and sexism and
you know, just general dumbassery, thanks to the President, so... I decided not.
Also like, I wouldn't be able to wear that shirt anyways because [clicks tongue] I burned it!
I wish I was kidding, I'm really not. The good thing about making videos in
English is that my mom doesn't necessarily understand me
so she will then not know that I burned my Brazil soccer team t-shirt at a
rotest that I went and she does not know that I did. Anyways. Lots of different
things happened in the month of June. The protests against police brutality, racism
and white supremacy have still carried on in the United States and throughout
the world, still going strong, with a lot of attendance, massive crowds, and even
though the media is not necessarily reporting them right now, the movement is
still going strong. So, I'm still gonna leave a couple of links in the
description below so you can check that out. Another thing that has also been
going on is... Coronavirus! So yeah, Coronavirus cases have spiked in the US
recently, but it's not like I am in a position to actually criticize anyone's
handling of the Coronavirus' cases, because... [groans]. After being chastised
constantly for not saying a word about the 50k Brazilians who lost their lives
due to Covid, the President of Brazil decided to pay homage to them like so:
[cue horrid rendering of Ave Maria in an out of tune accordion].
And if that is not enough, then he decided to kidnap a dog. I wish I was
kidding, I am not. The guy kidnapped a dog. Also, another thing that has happened in
the month of June is that I read a couple of books. And because this is the
least interesting thing out of all the things I've mentioned in this video,
that's what we're going to talk about today! [Jazz Hands]. So, let me find the books that I
read this month and let me talk about them, okay! Work this
month was very tiring, very hectic, so I didn't have the energy to read a lot, and
if I did read I picked up like, some really easy, lighthearted things, or I
intended to. We're gonna get to that in a second, but I tried to and I failed
miserably, but okay. So, the first book that I read this month is Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah. The book comes in this edition
that I've received by my monthly subscription service in Brazil. So it
comes in the box, like this, and when you open the box or the cover or, whatever, it
comes with the actual book and also comes with a leaflet that has an
interview with the author and a couple other interesting information about the
book and the context of the book. The edition is super pretty, I'm super happy I
have this one. Born a crime is an autobiographical memoir written by
comedian Trevor Noah, who is mostly known for heading "The Daily Show with Trevor
Noah". What did I think about this book? I absolutely adored this book. I have known
about Trevor Noah for a long time, I've watched the show, I've always thought he was
hilarious, but I didn't know how hilarious he could get until I actually
read this book. Another unexpected effect of this book was that I developed a
crush on Trevor Noah that I did not know that I had before. It was there, it
was like, on stand-by, but after I read this book I was like oh... Oh we're having
it, okay. I liked his style, I liked how he could add levity to situations, some
situations were objectively funny situations, but some situations
weren't as funny on a first glance, so the way that he wrote this, with a lot of
levity involved, made so that some things that were very heavy-handed
topics were treated with some light-heartedness. Another thing that I thought
was really interesting was that he mentions in this book the different
racial relations in South Africa, and I thought that this was a very interesting
perspective, because like I said in my Angela Davis video, sometimes when we read
things from an United States' perspectives, I can’t really identify with
that as a Brazilian, but I could identify with a lot of what Trevor Noah describes
of African- South Africa's racial relations. Of course, South Africa had the
Apartheid, which was, you know, a legal system of racial segregation that
actively put Black people as sub-humans and sub-citizens, and Brazil never really
had that, institutionalized. But there are different effects, or different things
that happened in South Africa that are very similar to the experience that we
have in Brazil. There's this one part that he explains that while he is
mixed race, he is not "Coloured". And what he means by that is that his mother is
Black, and his dad is Swiss, so his dad is white, so he's a mixed-race child, but
he's not from the racial group called "Coloured", who are the result of many
centuries of miscegenation that are not quite sub-citizen level, but they're also
not full citizens. And if they whitened themselves, they might get full
citizenship under the Apartheid regimen. I thought that was really interesting
because in Brazil we have a similar group, and that group is called "Pardo"
So, in Brazil you can identify yourself usually as Black, as white, as Asian, or as
as Pardo (NOTE: Also as native-Brazilian!!! That's why I need scripts). And Pardo are people who are not quite black, but they're also not white
If you're wondering what a Pardo person looks like [points at self] Me. It looks like me.
Obviously, the term "Pardo" has been a source of contentiousness amongst racial
scholars in Brazil and the Black movement in Brazil, because they
say that "Pardo" is a way to erase Blackness, and that is also correct.
My grandma once told me that she was answering like, the census questions,
and the lady who was asking her the questions said, "What ethnicity are you?" and my
grandma answered "I'm Black". And the census lady said "Oh that is so ugly...
Don't put that, let's put Pardo, because that's better". And I don't think I have
enough words to describe you how much of a stern, serious and no nonsense woman
my grandma is, so she was just like "bitch... whatever".
Because racial relations in Brazil are so complicated, being
Pardo carried a lesser weight than being Black. So many people who would
otherwise identify as Pardo are now reclaiming their Blackness, and I think
that's amazing. I just cannot do that. And that was the
first time I had to call my therapist this month. I called my therapist because I
was like, what do I do with this racial identity that I don't know- In Brazil,
specifically in Brazil. I don't know what would happen in the US. When
I went to Budapest in 2016 someone asked me if I was Turkish? You know, racially
ambiguous! A little bit of everywhere. So, that was one thing that I thought was
really interesting, to see like, how different systems of oppression and
domination could lead to similar results. Other topics that Trevor
Noah talked in this book that I thought were really interesting and relevant was,
when he talked about domestic violence and his mother's abusive relationship
with his step-dad, which eventually led to his mother being shot and surviving by a
miracle. Even though he talks about it in a very light-hearted way, it's never made
light of, if that makes sense, like he is light-hearted in the way that he tells
the story, but it's never made light of. It's never something that is not
important. He's always very aware of the violence that women have to go through,
and how revolutionary and ground-breaking his own mother was. Like,
he loves his mother so much, it seeps through the book. And I think that is seventy-five percent
of the reason why I developed a crush on Trevor Noah. Long story short,
I gave this book five out of five stars, I absolutely adored it.
I think he's super funny, I would highly recommend reading this book. [In Portuguese, startled]: Are you okay? [Cecilia]: I'm dying.
[Cecilia]: Did you hear me yelling while I was working out? [Luísa]: Do you wanna show up? [Cecilia, in English]: Not really.
[Luísa]: Okay. It's fine]. [Cecilia]: My legs don't work anymore. [Luísa]: Okay. [Cecília]: I need water. [Luísa]: Okay. Oh, speaking of water, can you hand me my water bottle? [Cecília]: I guess so. It's full!
[Luísa]: Yeah, that's why I want it! [Laughter]. The next book that I read this month was Felix Ever After
by Kacen Callender. So Felix Ever After is a novel about a young trans boy called
Felix as he tries to navigate this weird world of almost graduating, and having
crushes, and etc etc. And [pauses in LOVE] I LOVED Felix Ever After so much. There are so many
things about this book that I absolutely loved. The first one is that Felix is
dealing some very difficult things, like his mother leaving, like his dad not
quite being adapted, or being used to, or being accepting of his gender identity,
some of his friends, "friends", """""friends"""""" being fucking assholes because- also
because of his gender identity, trying to figure out his own sexuality, and I think
those are very interesting topics to be told in a YA book. But also, it talks
about some other, very teenager type of things, like falling in love, and
wondering what photo to post on Instagram, and making very bad decisions,
and not necessarily taking the time to assess a situation before diving straight in.
Am I talking out of experience?The answer is yes. But I honestly think that
my teenage years would've been a lot easier if I had books like Felix Ever
After to keep me company. I absolutely adored the writing style. I thought it
was so light-hearted. I loved Felix as a character. And the types of things that
the antagonists in the book would do, you know, to create tension and etc, are
not things that I think are far-fetched to teenagers to do. And one thing that
I'm very pissed off when I read YA - I'm gonna get to that in a second, in the
next book, but one thing that I feel very pissed about YA in general is that
you're talking about the point of view of teenagers, but they have the mental
ability of an adult, and that is not the case. And I think Felix Ever After is like,
one of the first- it was the first book that I read that really depicted
teenagers in a way that felt extremely realistic. And it's a very confusing time, and
I think Kacen Callender did an amazing job of portraying that in this book. One
thing that i felt kinda iffy about - it's not really a bad thing,
and I think it just happened because I'm an adult and I'm reading a YA
book that depicts teenagers so well - the target audience is clearly not my
age demographic. One thing that I felt was like, when the book was going into the
descriptions of what transgender is, what bisexual is, what asexual is, and
and different sorts of identities within the LGBTQ+ spectrum, sometimes it felt a
little like I was reading off of a dictionary of sorts? I was like, okay, I
know that... I don't think that this is a negative of the book, and I'm not gonna
put it that way, it just dampened my enjoyment of the book by this much [shows index finger and thumb pressed against each other].
Because I already kinda knew that. So I was very interested in other things in
the book, like for example, when Felix says, right at the beginning of the book,
"My name is Felix Love, but I can't fall in love". I think that was so beautiful
how in the in-between lines Felix was also going like "oh no one would
love me", or "no one would stand up for me", and how he would internalize these
extremely violent opinions about his own gender identity and his own sexuality,
and how the book would like, slowly deconstruct those ideas until Felix goes
like "oh, I'm worthy of love". "I'm worthy of having friends who'll stand up for me".
"I'm worthy of being respected in my gender identity". "I'm worthy of being
respected as the person I am". Like, when he figures out like, "I don't have to
withstand abuse just to keep people in my life. I am deserving of having good
friends. I am
deserving of love. I am deserving of falling in love". And I was so interested in that.
But most of the time I felt like this dynamic that was going like, sort of
in the background, kinda got overshadowed by the sort of dictionary-type
of description. I do understand that if you are a teenager who are somehow
questioning your gender identity or your sexuality, this kind of like awkward- a little
bit awkward exposition were people kinda look like they're reading off of a
dictionary, that would be kinda like invaluable for people to go and be like
"Oh, can I identify with that?", "I wonder what that means",
or "Oh my God, I didn't know people could feel that way", and I think that because
his is a YA book, this is the best way that things could've been written, because I
think that if I was a teenager, questioning my own bisexuality, like I was
one day, and I had a book that would explain things to me in such a light
way, this would be like my favorite book in my life, but I think I kinda missed
my window there, so it felt a little bit flat for me, and I was more
interested in the things that
were going in the background and the themes that were going in the background than actually the whole exposition. But it
did kinda like, annoy me a little bit while I was reading the book, but then
again, I'm not saying that this is a flaw of the book. This is the way that this
book should've been written. But my enjoyment of the book was a bit iffy about
that so I gave this book four-and-a-half out of five stars. And this
was the second time that I had to call my therapist for the month, because I was
like [fake crying] "Why didn't I have a book like this when I was a teenager and I needed
someone to tell me that it was okay to want to kiss some girls???
And my therapist was very kind and nice about it as she always is, and she kindly
told me to stop fucking crying. So, thanks again, Sabrina, amazing. And then after I
was done with Felix Ever After, [pause] I read Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Yeah. For
the first time. Did I get spoiled? Absolutely. Did I cry [pause] Absolutely. "Luísa
why did you say Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom?" Because, one, it's a duology,
but two, I read the two books in twenty-four hours. It was like a twenty-four-hour readathon,
but I had just fucked up at work and I was feeling very miserable, so I just needed
something to take me like, away from what a giant disappointment I felt, so I just
aid down in bed and read two books in 24 hours like the most miserable
readathon. Fun times. If you, like me until a month and a half ago was living
under a rock and did not know what the Grishaverse is, the Grishaverse is a
series of books created by author Leigh Bardugo, that talks about this
country called Ravka and there are Grisha in it, and Grisha are kinda like
witches? Everybody hates the Grisha but Ravka doesn't, it's kinda like in
this universe. The first three books of the Grishaverse are the Grisha trilogy, that
is Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. And I read Shadow and
Bone last month, and I started Siege and Storm also last month but I DNF'd that.
Because the Grisha trilogy wasn't... It just wasn't it,
it just wasn't it. Like, Alina is a fucking dumbass. You might not like the
Darkling, and that's okay, he's a piece of shit, I know, I know, why do I know he's a
piece of shit? Because I'm irrevocably attracted to him. My taste in men usually
goes, if I scan a crowd and I find a guy and I'm like oh, that guy is hot? There's
an eighty-percent chance that he's a serial killer. You know, because I know that I have shit
taste in men, I saw the Darkling, I thought he was hot,
and I was like oh, he's going to fuck shit up. And I was right. Even if you're
not attracted to wrong people, we have to admit that if you are a seventeen-year-old girl
who just found out that she's incredibly powerful, but has kinda like
no idea how to deal with that power, and then this really old guy starts
hitting on you and being very weird to you, but that guy
is also like the most powerful Grisha alive, and then someone says "he wants to
uck you up girl", first things first, you should have seen that one coming from
ike, miles away, and Alina did not. And I was like... Do you have
a single functional brain cell? Two: this is the most powerful Grisha alive. Did you
think that running away from him would work? At which moment did you go like,
maybe running away from the most powerful guy in the world in this moment
wouldn't be a good idea, because he's going to fucking find me". Guess what
he did? He fucking found her! [screams in disbelief] Oh my God, who would've thought???!?!?!? Alina just went all surprised Pikachu
and go like [shocked gasp]. You could see that one coming, oh my God!!!! I finished the book and I couldn't stop thinking like, the
only way Alina could have gotten out of that situation was if she, after Baghra
told her what the Darkling wanted to do, she should've gone back
to her room, pretended to be a stupid-ass teenager in love with a guy three hundred years older
than her, and then, in the last moment, backstabbed the everliving shit out of the
guy! That's like, a fail-proof plan, but it would require more than a single
functional braincell and we've established that Alina has none.
It's just [NO THOUGHTS. HEAD EMPTY]. Anyways, I disliked Alina a lot. I also disliked Mal. Yeah, no, I was
far more interested in the side characters, to be honest. I thought
Zoya was intriguing, I thought Genya was intriguing. After I started reading the
Grisha trilogy I was like, do I really want to read Six of Crows? And everybody
was like no, you've GOT to read Six of Crows, it's so much better than the
Grisha trilogy, and I'm glad that I finally took advice - because I'm terrible
at doing that - and started reading Six of Crows, and then it was just like the
entire book was just the side characters that I liked in the trilogy! And I was like, yeah!
Yeah, I like this!!! Six of Crows is basically like this group of teenagers who have no
responsible adult whatsoever to look after them, and they decide to go on a
heist and break into the Ice Court, which is this palace, which is- No one could
ever break into the palace. The premise of the book was kinda like,
okay. I started reading Six of Crows and I was very invested in the characters. I
absolutely loved all of the main cast. Everybody just has this very specific
personality that compliments each other so well, and they are
very flawed people but they also have very interesting reasonings behind what
they're doing, and I loved that. I loved how well-rounded and three-dimensional those
characters were. But like, the plot itself I was like, okay, they're going to break into
he Ice Court, and I was like well, that thing that you're thinking about, yes,
we're going to address the elephant in the room, But, I thought. Well.
They're going to the Ice Court, and then there's going to be this
heist, this heist is probably going to end on book 2, and that's probably
gonna happen when the heist ends, and I was wrong. So I was kinda okay with the
book for like the first three-quarters of the book, and then for the
last quarter of the book I was like [shocked] OH NO! So I was emotionally invested at that point. But, because I had
ead through three-quarters of lukewarm plot but very good character
development, I was like okay, I'm into it. And then [emotional pause] I read Crooked Kingdom.
I... Did not expect all of the things that happened in Crooked Kingdom, I was not
mentally prepared for any of them... [shocked] Oh my God. I knew he was going to die! I knew he
was going to die!! I knew that, I knew that! Everybody spoiled that to me! And I still
ried like a baby!!!! I think the reason why I liked the
duology so much is because the stakes were really high, and it would be like,
just another YA story if everything had gotten according to the plan, but it
did not! It did not, things, like- shit hit the fan so fucking fast.
I feel like there's a difference between killing off a character because
it's part of a plot, and it's part of a point, and killing off a character just
for shock value. I hate when authors kill off characters
just for shock value because I think that is a cheap way to get the reader
to feel something. And I think that ~the death~ that occurred felt attuned
to the plot in a way, that they were all the time talking about how impossible it'd
be if they managed to pull this off, because they do some very weird shit
and some very impossible shit, and you would expect- you know it's
a YA book, and you're like okay, they're all gonna make it and they're going to
be happily ever after - BUT THEY'RE NOT!!! Also, by the way, the only happily ever
after couple is Jesper and Wylan. The only gay couple in the book! The
straight couples? Fucked! No one had a happy ending, but the gay couple had!!! After the
last quarter of Six of Crows and the entirety of Crooked Kingdom, like how
the plot picked up and how, you know, all the decisions the characters made
ame back to bite them in the ass, and I love some good biting in the ass- [awkward pause].
That did not sound out the way that I wanted to sound, but there you have it.
I absolutely adored the way that, you know, all the decisions the characters
made had some very dire consequences to all of them, and how their past was
was always something interesting, and that added a lot to the dimension of the
characters, and explained a lot why they made some of the decisions that they
made. Also, can we talk about Kaz and Inej? Can we talk about Kaz and Inej? [shocked pause] The two
most dangerous people in the group. Cannot touch. They cannot touch. And they
love each other, but they cannot touch. This is- I finished Crooked Kingdom
and I read all five hundred and fifty fanfictions of Kaz and Inej available on AO3
and I still want more. [Sighs]. Okay. I get why this book is so hyped up by the book
community, both on booktwitter and on booktube. Those are really good books.
One thing that annoyed me: teenagers not acting like teenagers. And this annoyed
me a little bit more because I feel like both Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom
are books that are supposed to be adult fantasy, not YA. Because I feel like
there was so much more that could've been explored if the books were adult.
Leigh Bardugo matured enough as a writer when she transitioned from the Grisha
trilogy to the Six of Crows duology - not only
because she stopped using first person, because that worked out so well for her - but,
because I feel like she managed to strike a really good balance of plot,
characters and the weight that decisions have. I don't think the
villains felt cartoonish in this book, because- the Darkling is like- Basically the
arkling is like a cardboard cutout of a Scooby-Doo villain, and we all knew, we
all saw it from miles away, except for Alina, because Alina is dumb.
But! I'm not- I digress. And I think - this is going to be an unpopular opinion - I think
that Leigh Bardugo wasn't exactly on top of her abilities as a writer when
she wrote the Grisha trilogy, which is a pity, because I feel like the Leigh
Bardugo that matured more and wrote the Six of Crows duology would've done a
far better job if she went back to the Grisha trilogy and did it again. I still
haven't read King of Scars - don't worry, I was already thoroughly spoiled. But I'm
gonna put off reading King of Scars until the second part comes out, I think
it's gonna be March- March, 2021, and I'm gonna put off because I hate waiting.
But you know, it doesn't matter, I already know the entirety of the plot, and I already
ship Zoyalai as fuck. Keep this information, it's gonna be more relevant in a
second. But, to sum it up, I gave Six of Crows four out of five stars and then I
gave Crooked Kingdom five out of five stars. And then I called my therapist
again. I called my therapist to go on and on about how it's so unfair that bad
things happen to good people, and it's so sad that some people don't know better
and they're forced to live this life of hatred, and she thought I was talking
about real life people but she was very concerned when she heard that I was
talking about fictional characters, so... [grimaces] Sorry Sabrina. The next book that I read
for the month of June was Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis. I have a full video
that is extremely long about this one book. While I was re-reading this book, I
was annotating it in my specific way that I do with my
academic books, and that took a lot of my willpower, but also, I was still digesting
Crooked Kingdom, so I just like, dedicated two weeks of my month to actually
finishing this book, annotating it, and actually making the script for the video.
But, if you want to know, I gave Angela Davis' Women, Race, and Class five out of five stars.
Can you put academic books on Goodreads though? Huh, good question. After I was done with
hat, I was like well, I needed something lighthearted after Women, Race and
Class and after going through the emotional destruction of Crooked Kingdom. Kate
from twitter said that this book called Hard Sell, by Lauren Layne, read a lot like
a Zoya and Nikolai alternative universe type of shit, so I was like okay, I'm gonna
download it. It was free on Kindle Unlimited, so I was like well, why not. So,
about this book, it's basically a story about this one hotshot young
wonder-child investor who gets himself in kinda like a PR mess? And then he hires like
this PR Agent, specialist, to pretend to be his girlfriend, and that obviously
ends up with both of them falling in love because, you know. First things first,
I had already read that book before. But I did not remember a single fucking
word of it, so we were off to a very great start. It's like- It's cookie-cutter,
you know what's gonna happen, there's a couple of sex thrown in
the middle, and like, it was okay also. Or maybe just like, after I graduated many
of my friends actually became investment bankers or became investment lawyers. So
many of my friends moved over to São Paulo. I have spent so much time with
investment bankers and investment agents and investment attorneys, that I cannot
find any of it hot. It's- so mind-bogglingly boring. I did not think
that the guy was all that hot because, you know, investment people are
a dime a dozen. So, you know, the story was okay. It was what I needed. I needed
something light-hearted and I needed something that wouldn't
take too much of my brain power to understand. There was just enough sex in
it to keep my attention, and I was like okay. But I could turn my brain off, and
that was what I needed, so I gave it like, three out of five stars. Then the month
was almost over, and I was like I need something very cute, very soft, very
sweet, to close the month, and then... I picked up The Henna Wars. Oh my God, I'm
gonna try not to cry, okay. Shit. Okay. I'm gonna try not to cry. I cry just thinking
about this book. Okay. Get it together. Get it together. Get it together. The Henna Wars
is the debut novel of Adiba Jaigirdar. Basically tells the story of this young
girl called Nishat. And Nishat is of Bengali descent, and when we meet
Nishat in the book she is about to tell her parents - her very Muslim,
raditional parents - that she's a lesbian. That doesn't go too badly but it also
doesn't go well, so it's kinda like this weird limbo that Nishat is thrown
in. While Nishat is trying to deal with that, she also meets again this girl who
she went to school with, called Flávia. And Flávia is an irish-brazilian girl who
studied with Nishat when they were very young. They meet again in a wedding
because Flávia's older sister is a bridesmaid in this wedding, and
then they go to the same school together. And then Nishat is like... [gay pause] I'm so gay. The
school decides to bring up this business competition and each student has to come
up with a really good business idea. And Nishat, being Bengali, she's like well,
okay, I'm gonna start a henna business. And then Flávia is like oh, I'm gonna
start a henna business as well! And then Nishat is like [nervous laughter] Wait what? Basically
that's the plot of the book. I'm not gonna say more because I don't want to
spoil it. What drew me to this book in the first place? Was it the sapphic, YA,
lovey-dovey type of relationship? Yes. But, was it because Flávia is Brazilian? Not
actually. I actually found that out when I started reading the book. And I freaked
the fuck out. I was like Oh my God. This can either, like, go really bad or
this could be super good. The problem is that Flávia in the beginning of the book
doesn't understand that the henna is a part of Nishat's
culture. And because it's part of Nishat's culture she can't just profit out of it.
It's different because Nishat is the one that was raised with it. it has a
cultural significance to her. But it's not the same for Flávia who just saw
that at a wedding one day and then decided that she wanted to do the same. Also,
Flávia has this one cousin called Chyna. Chyna is a white girl. And her name is
written with a Y. [WOC pause] Okay. And Chyna is just generally a horrible person. Flávia
really wants to please her cousin, because her cousin is from the Irish
part of her family, a part that she's kinda estranged because she's also
half-brazilian. Things were going okay with the book, I started like, nitpicking-
I have to admit. I started nitpicking it for a bit. I was like well,
the Portuguese is a little bit off. There's this one part that Nishat goes to Flávia's
house and when they get there Flávia's mother kinda teases her about Nishat
for a little bit, and Flávia is kinda like "Mãe, or favor". And like, no Brazilian teenager
would say things like that, it's not- it's not very natural.
I feel Brazilian teens would be like "Mãe, pelo amor de Deus...". I've done that a couple
of times. Brazilian mothers are relentless, dude. They also start
discussing Romero Britto and I thought this was so good because she was
right, Romero Britto is really contentious in Brazil. And the correct
nswer is that Romero Britto sucks. So, then, lots of things happen. Nishat
gets into this really beautiful process of growing up and accepting her identity
and her parents also making an effort to accept her identity. And they go-
they start off kinda rocky but then they kinda meet halfway, and that was beautiful
but that was not the part of the book that really spoke to me. I'm gonna read it.
I'm gonna try not to cry- also, I know my Kindle is very old, and I don't
care. So basically in this scene Nishat is asking Flávia why she's not out
as a bisexual girl to her cousin and her friends. This is what Flávia answers.
I'm gonna try not to cry, okay. Oh God. "Well, you know, it's not exactly easy to be
Brazilian here. When people think of Brazil,
they think- I don' know, futebol, carnival, partying, whatever. And all the boys think,
because I'm a Brazilian girl, I'll be up for anything. You don't know the way they
look at me, the things they say. After the party, I just kept thinking how much
worse it would be if it was true that I was bisexual. Brazilian and bisexual? I
would never hear the end of it." Oh shit, I- I'm gonna ruin my entire fucking make-up.
I cannot tell you how utterly frustrating it is that you have a
country that is so rich and so vibrant and so full of culture, and the only
thing that people take away of it is to see you as a sex object.
I cried for so long after I read this because, I felt like, oh shit, this is what
representation feels like. Every time people talk about being Brazilian, people
always talk about the happiness. They never talk about the ugly parts of it,
and I'm not talking about "Oh, there's so much violence in Rio de Janeiro", I'm
talking about being from a country that was bled dry
and still being expected to give away everything. I get so upset about it
because like, I'm so proud of my culture and my country. I'm so proud of how
resilient we are. I'm so proud of all of that. And it's just so tiring to be reduced
to be something to be used all the time. I'm trying really hard to keep it
together here. I don't know, just- I read this paragraph and I just
t instantly felt drawn to so many things that I've heard while I was abroad and
so many things that I've said to me while I was online. And it's just like- Do
you know how hard it is to be Brazilian and bisexual? It's very fucking hard.
It's very fucking hard.
[Sighs]. Needless to say, when I reached that point in the book I was blown away by
the care and the respect and the love that the representation of Brazilian
people got. Flávia never stopped being happy, but this is a huge part of her
identity, just as it is a huge part of mine. And then I called my therapist. This
paragraph evoked a couple of memories that I actually had to work through in therapy.
I do recognize that the purpose of the book was not to give Brazilian girls
some representation, but I was so overwhelmed by this amount of representation
that I instantly felt so grateful for this book. I knew that this
was going to be a five-star read. On a lighter note, however, the only thing
that I do have to point out for Flávia's representation as Brazilian is that a),
Brazilians are very musical, and we flirt a lot through music. And b), Brazilians have a
long-standing tradition of sapphic singers and songwriters who are very
famous. And I would just would love to see Flávia being like "hey so, I listened to
this song yesterday and I thought of you!!!" and Nishat just receiving the song and
being like "What the fuck does this mean, what the FUCK does this mean", and
the song just being like [Cássia Eller - All Star]: How strange would it be if I didn't fall in love with you?
Salt would taste sweet on these new lips.
[Singing]: Quando chego ali, e entro no elevator, aperto o doze
que é o seu andar, não vejo a hora de te encontra-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!  {In Portuguese]: Mom!!! Mom!!!!  [Mom]: What? [Luísa]: Bolsonaro tested positive for Coronavírus!!!! [Mom]:How do you know?
I watched the and there was nothing about it- [Luísa]: I just saw it on my news feed! [Mom]: Well he could die already  [Laughter] [Tiktok]: And I'm' not saying she deserved it, but I'm saying God's timing
is always right.  [Mom]: And I have a feeling that if this man dies the virus will go away tomorrow. [Laughter] Uh so, yeah, if you couldn't tell, I gave The Henna Wars five out of five starts for
the complete destruction of my heart. So these were all of the books that I read
in the month of June. I hope that you enjoyed this rambling of mine. I really
hope Bolsonaro caught the virus [whispering] I really hope Bolsonaro caught the virus, I really hope Bolsonaro caught the virus- okay, oh God, oh Jesus,
forgive me, oh... [Kisses Saint George's/Ogum necklace] I'm so sorry. Oh God. Oh God. [Sighs]. And if you're wondering
about my July TBR. [T'challa]: We don't do that here.
Anyways, I'm fine, I'm good, my therapist is amazing.
I worked through all of the trauma. I'm still a bit emotional but we're working
through it. If I can give you some advice: go to therapy. Therapy is great, I
absolutely would recommend, I would give my therapist six out of five stars for being
amazing. Yeah, this was my June wrap-up. I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll
see you a next time. Goodbye.
