Sista Sister by Candice Brathwaite review – powerful life lessons | Autobiography and memoir

In Sista Sister, Candice Brathwaite, writer of I Am Not Your Baby Mother, displays on her previous errors in friendships, funds and household in an try and make the highway much less rocky for different black girls. Whereas she bravely touches on intercourse work and medicines, Sista Sister focuses on “common” matters similar to social media, courting and self-love, echoing the sort of discourses you would possibly discover on group chats. Every chapter ends with bullet factors – “assume earlier than you tweet” and “not everyone seems to be a bredrin” are just some of the emotions she needs she had generally known as a teen.

The primary lesson is on hair and the euphoria and struggling that Brathwaite experiences within the pursuit of magnificence – from getting her hair braided and feeling like Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2 to chemically straightening her hair a lot it burnt her scalp. Brathwaite now sports activities a shaved head, not simply achieved – she visited a number of barbers, however was turned away as a result of they didn’t wish to be accountable for taxing her femininity. “Wha occur? Yuh flip lesbian,” one among them says, but it surely’s her father’s comment that cuts the deepest: “Good luck looking for a fella with a seem like that,” he says.

Magnificence requirements are addressed once more in a piece on colourism. She discusses being persuaded to make use of bleaching merchandise and being the “ugly pal” ranked final on lists, behind her lighter-skinned friends, by teenage boys. These recollections bury themselves deep into her spirit; later, when Brathwaite has a daughter, she watches her carefully for 2 years, afraid she would possibly develop into as darkish as her. She refers to a second when she thought – mistakenly, it later transpires – {that a} lighter-skinned lady had pipped her to a job. “I needed to unzip myself, shuffle out of my pores and skin, a bit like a snake, and depart behind this torturous darkish overcoat.” Her relapse into self-hate is distressing to learn.

A chunk on “manifestation” (a pseudo-scientific self-help tactic) reads like a sponsored submit for The Secret, Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 self-help guide concerning the regulation of attraction; the concept that optimistic or unfavorable ideas affect future occasions. “I used to be gobsmacked by how, hastily, the issues I assumed had been correct hurdles simply didn’t appear to be blockers for me. I all the time obtained the job,” she writes. There’s energy in optimistic pondering, however with black youth unemployment on the same rate because it was in the course of the 80s riots, there’s one thing a bit uncomfortable about suggesting to sistas that their ideas are accountable for their situations, whereas glossing over capitalism and structural bias.