A review by angelreadsthings
American Dreams by Sapphire

4.0

This collection gets four stars not because I enjoyed it but rather because I found it exceptionally necessary. Sapphire's writing is brutal, harrowing, and unequivocally real. She sugarcoats nothing, imbuing her work with all the anger and ugliness that the situations possess when experienced in real life. At the same time, she manages to write of horrible and traumatic experiences in sometimes beautiful ways which makes the ugliness of the situations cut more sharply. I believe this collection offers great insight into what it can mean to be a Black woman, a survivor of sexual and physical assault, a woman loving woman, and a creative person among other things and recommend it for those reasons with the caveat that this whole book deserves a long list of trigger warnings (most notably for intense descriptions of rape, physical abuse, misogynoir, and strong references to suicide).