'Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion' by Jia Tolentino is a collection of essays that delve into modern forms of self-delusion, examining topics such as commodification, gender, sex, identity, and the internet. Tolentino's writing style is often personal, offering insights into societal issues like feminism, patriarchy, and capitalism as experienced by millennials in the U.S. The essays are well-researched, clever, and articulate, with a focus on the changes brought about by the digital age, commercialization of identity, and the evolving role of women in society.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The essays address sensitive subjects such as sexual assault, drug use, and critiques of feminism, which may be challenging for some readers.
From The Publisher:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"From The New Yorker's beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television."-Esquire
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times
"A whip-smart, challenging book."-Zadie Smith
"Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time."-Vulture
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review
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Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.
Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine's journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino's sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY
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About the Author:
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Raised in Texas, she studied at the University of Virginia before serving in Kyrgyzstan in the Peace Corps and receiving her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. She was…
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