AN ANTHOLOGY OF ASSHOLES

Only six months after moving from Louisville, Kentucky to sunny Southern California with her high-school sweetheart, twenty-three year old Minda Honey finds herself kicked out of their shared home and facing the challenges of early adulthood alone. In An Anthology of Assholes' ten essays, Minda hilariously chronicles those turbulent twentysomething years as she attempts to make life rafts out of the men she dates—men who think condoms are a courtesy and the word “no” is negotiable; men who claim their aversion to dark-skinned girls is simply a “preference.” In short, assholes. But with the wry self-awareness that accompanies hindsight, Minda acknowledges that she was an asshole, too. As she revisits her failed relationships, she confronts her own internalized colorism, questions the idea of sex as requisite relationship validation, examines the flawed relationship dynamics modeled by her alcoholic father and passive mother, and more. With every asshole suffered, there is also a lesson learned; by the end of the collection, Minda enters her thirties with the understanding that “successfully adulting” does not mean using romantic relationships as a catch-all solution to life's problems. It simply means being brave enough to live through the questions life is asking her. Minda's wise compassionate voice framing the narrative of her younger self will speak to Millennial and Gen-Z readers pushing through their twenties; especially Black women who don't often see their multifaceted lives depicted on the page, much less celebrated for how far they've come.

Minda Honey received her MFA in non-fiction creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. Her work has been published by Longreads, Vice, Playboy, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere.