Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be

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.)

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'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.

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