I'm sorry to say that I had no idea who Nichole Perkins was before I came across this essay collection. Sorry because it so eloquently depicted what it's like being a Black girl who was raised in the South, and reading this collection felt like talking to a friend. In Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be, Nichole Perkins lays bare her story in such an open and no-holds-barred way. She touches on Black Southern girlhood, sexuality, agency, sibling relationships, parental relationships, infidelity, and feeling at home with yourself. Never since I read Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies have I felt so seen. I'm from North Carolina, and a lot of the things Perkins talked about hit very close to home, like the stories about her mother and grandmother, and the way sex is handled in Black Southern families. It can be a very stifling environment, and Perkins captured that perfectly.

In Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be, Perkins fully embraces being imperfect. She's made some decisions in her life that may cause some people to raise their eyebrows, but she doesn't shy away from relating them to her reader. She owns them. A Black woman rarely has the space or opportunity to be multifaceted and flawed, and I hope that books like these give other Black women the courage to own their truths.

I love Nichole's voice. I became familiar with her a few years back through her podcast Thirst Aid Kit, and was so excited to see this become available through Netgalley. Her writing voice is just as soothing and comfortable as her physical voice, creating a warm space to explore the very tender nuances of womanhood, at every stage of development. Knowing that in order to understand the now, we have to revisit the past, she recounts notable experiences both joyful and traumatic, in a way that I found neither triggering or manipulative. I felt like I was sitting with a good friend, noting the pieces that resonated with me most and tucking them in a mental box for later comfort.

Unlike some other readers, I did not have prior experience with Nichole Perkins online or in writing. None is required to enjoy this essay collection that has a fairly light bent as many aspects of modern life are cleverly examined from an interesting point of view.

Nichole Perkins has an essay for everything relevant. Being a Southern black woman, online dating, physical health and shape, pop culture, friendships, depression, feminism and more. There is an essay for everyone to relate to. I see why Buzzfeed includes it in "Most Anticipated Books of 2021."

Journalist Nichole Perkins goes through twenty years of pop culture's impact on her life: music, media and the internet. She is unapologetic in her true storytelling. By the end of this memoir, readers will be left with self-awareness and confidence. I certainly am!

"Hear the dark liquor of her laughter rippling behind her sentences." ~ Saeed Jones

I live for this book title! It is one of my favorite lyrics of all time. So I chose to read this memoir based on the title alone. The came the cover art: brown glowing skin and long coffin-shaped nails with an outline design. Add the necklace with a heart-shaped charm and it was like looking in the mirror. What is in between of the front and back cover is nothing short of a good read.

~LiteraryMarie

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC. Reading this book was like talking with a good girlfriend. I can't wait to share this with our patrons.

I rate this book 4 1/2 stars

What I Like Most About The Book..
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* I absolutely love the title.
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* The content is very different from what I’m used to reading. Sexual in natural but not too raunchy. Touches on a lot of provocative issues often encountered by black women, yet rarely discussed.
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* The essay format kept my interest.
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* Nicole is bold, boisterous and unabashed. She puts it all out there. No topic seemed to be off limits. This made for a very explosive and explicit read.
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* The references and comparisons made to music and television shows were accurate and insightful. She totally hit the nail on the head as she describes how young black girls from television shows from back in the day, such as 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘏𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 and 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 were often warned to stay away from boys. And when they didn’t, they were referred to as “fast”. Yet, During this same time, young white girls in movies such as 𝘚𝘪𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴 and 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘐𝘯 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘬 were encouraged to have sex without ever having to worry about being labeled “fast”.
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* Her breakdown of the relationship between Kermit and Miss Piggy was eye opening. She definitely has me thinking of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘴 a little differently.
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If I Could Change Anything About The Book It Would Be…
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* I would have loved to read more of how music and television influenced Nicole’s life. Although she gives us a taste, she left the music and movie buff in me wanting a little more.

I was thrilled to see Thirst Buckets thanked in this book, because I came to Nichole's work through the Thirst Aid Kit podcast, truly one of the greats. There's so much to appreciate in these essays. I thought structurally they built and linked together to create a very compelling portrait of a woman in progress. I always love reading about how people relate to the pop culture that they love, which Nichole does with music and television especially. And I was fascinated by her essay about the internet forum she was active on; I want more of those in the world! You can tell she is a storyteller, and her frank prose makes you feel like you're having late night talks with an old friend, catching up on everything you've missed. She's admittedly working on establishing stronger boundaries given some of her more traumatic experiences, and intriguingly, this book does seem like the defenses are still very lowered. As someone who considers herself quite private, it was a stark contrast to read details of her life I wouldn't personally reveal even to close friends (not a judgment, just my nature). I appreciated the complexities of her life that her honesty gives readers access to. All in all a very compelling and thought-provoking read.

SOMETIMES I TRIP ON HOW HAPPY WE COULD BE is a fantastic collection of memoir essays from Nichole Perkins. I was only familiar with her writing on Twitter, but this book has made me so exciting to read more from her in the future. I just got lost in her stories, chronicling her love of pop culture with coming-of-age stories about sex, writing, and being a Gen X Black woman. It's like having a glass of wine with a good friend as she lets you in on her secrets and inner details of her private life while also making you laugh at pitch perfect references to icons like Kermit and Miss Piggy, Niles Crane, and the show Bones.

Perkins' focus on power and identity in the book is fascinating, While the essays weave in and out of different points in her life (you never quite know where each essay will take you in her place or time in life), the idea of working towards discovering your own agency (either professionally or sexually or in relationships) slowly develops as the overall theme. I really enjoyed this, and it took me until the end of the collection to look back and see the essays not as a disjointed array but as a cohesive narrative structure of her life and how these themes have developed over time for her. Perkins is an incredible writer and I can't recommend this book more.

CW: sexual abuse, domestic violence

The essays in Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be add up to something fascinating--an exploration of power and identity, perhaps, primarily through the lens of romantic and sexual relationships. Organized differently, and with a more overt attempt to pull themes or straightforward narratives from her life, this might have read like a memoir. Instead, it loops, curls back on itself, resists chronological ordering or linearity. Since Nichole's relationship to power isn't straightforward, this structure makes sense.

Here, power includes a variety of ways in which Nichole claims agency: exploring her sexual desires; establishing and refining standards for romantic relationships; setting boundaries, and naming the ways in which those boundaries are transgressed. She introduces other Black women and their relationship to control and power (for instance: Janet Jackson, her mother channeling Janet to send messages to Nichole's abusive father, and her own adoption of Janet's uniform), and probes at the ways in which Black women are seen as both hypersexual and overly picky, too much and not enough. By the end of the collection, it's clear that Nichole is still in process, still figuring herself and her desires out, but she speaks with a blend of vulnerability and confidence that shows how much she's learned about herself through the experiences she details in these essays.

Prince, Kermit and Miss Piggy, Niles Crane, Booth and Brennan of Bones, and more all provide context and humor for these essays, although my favorite might the one in which she moves away from the pop culture references and leans into more figurative language ("How to Build a Man-Made Tourist Attraction").

Wow wow WOW! This is a captivating memoir full of humor and honesty that will leave you lost in thought. She discusses topics like sexuality, abuse, and love all throughout the essays. The format of the memoir as a series of essays helps with the noncontinuous flow of the piece and gives the reader bite-sized pieces to consume at their leisure. I loved her self-awareness as she looks back on her life, as she doesn't pull any punches in critiquing her actions as well as those of her conquests. If you want a sex-positive memoir that hits hard, this is the one for you.

*Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review*

I felt like this book was very honest and warm. We got a good look at the trials and tribulations of her family but also the joys. I liked the parts about pop culture a lot and I hope she writes another book about that someday. The Fraiser section was perfect.

I wish this book had been marketed a little differently. While Nichole definitely does discuss a lot about being a Black southern woman and the various ways that her upbringing and her family and her values have directed her life, this is book is really, truly at heart about sex and romantic/physical relationships. About being a Black woman who enjoys sex. About relationships both good, bad and in between. About bodily autonomy, about female pleasure, about being single and childless at 40 and what that truly means today. Nichole is probably best known for being one half of the Thirst Aid Kit podcast, and so I don't think this book would have suffered in readership at all if it proclaimed boldly what is was discussing. I don't think I've ever read an essay collection (or any book maybe?) that so frankly explores these topics and I commend Nichole for being so open, so brutally honest, so unafraid to shed light on the dark and ugly aspects of her experiences with sex and relationships, For that this book absolutely should be commended. That said, I did feel like these essays were always just one step away from truly saying something. I got to the end of a majority of these pieces and felt like they almost got somewhere, almost made their point, almost reached somewhere and then just fell a little bit short. I am finding that a lot of books I've read this year that were written in 2020 are having these "almost but not quite" feeling to them and I *totally* understand why, but I wish this had gone through a few more edits. Overall, though, I think a lot of necessary thoughts and discussions could and should come out of this book and I'm very glad I read it.

This is an amazing book. I've followed Perkins on Twitter for years (I think I discovered her voice and humor when she guested on the podcast 'Another Round'), and I jumped at the chance to read her memoir/essay collection early. It certainly delivers--the pieces range the gamut from meditations on Prince and early sexuality to Black hair, all tied back in some deeply engaging way to Perkins' own life. She discloses a lot here, in a lot of ways, and I think we're blessed as readers to get to witness her powerful mind think through things that have happened to her and her friends and family as well as more lighthearted things she's done, watched, or thought. It's not particularly a light-hearted collection (though there are great, funny moments), but it's a deeply felt one, and a deeply thought-through one, and I can't wait to buy a copy once it's available for sale. (Review based on a NetGalley eARC.)