It isn’t just potentially humiliating for Emira, it’s also exciting for the people around her - the nice white guy who made the tape, Emira’s nice white employers - because it offers them the chance to posture defensively about how not-racist they are by getting loudly angry at this racist white security guard. She calls Briar’s dad and has him come to the grocery store to defuse the situation - “he’s an old white guy so I’m sure everyone will feel better” - and when she sees a concerned white dude filming the confrontation on her behalf, she has him send her a copy and then delete it from his phone.īut the threat of that tape getting out looms over everything that follows in Such a Fun Age. The outraged BuzzFeed headline practically writes itself.Įmira, however, badly wants to avoid both getting arrested and going viral. It’s 2016 in the world of the novel, and viral videos depicting police officers and security guards acting casually brutal toward black people are a topic of much discussion. Both the security guard and Emira’s charge, Briar, are white. Then the store’s security guard comes over and accuses Emira of kidnapping the child.Įmira is black. Emira, a 26-year-old babysitter in Philadelphia, is amusing her 3-year-old charge by dancing with her through the aisles of a fancy grocery store. Such a Fun Age, a witty and biting debut novel from Kiley Reid that’s a Reese’s Book Club pick and is already in TV development with Lena Waithe, begins with a moment you can imagine going viral through your Twitter feed.
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