{"product_id":"you-get-what-you-pay-for-essays-9780525511441","title":"You Get What You Pay for: Essays","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn her \"witty and searing\" first essay collection, award-winning poet Morgan Parker examines \"the cultural legacy of Black womanhood and the meaning of finding 'well-being' in a world that wasn't built for you\" (\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Riveting and deeply personal . . . filled with poignant insights.\"--\u003ci\u003eCosmopolitan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America's cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby's fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith piercing wit and incisive observations, \u003ci\u003eYou Get What You Pay For\u003c\/i\u003e is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman's psyche--and of the writer's search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMorgan Parker's\u003c\/b\u003e debut book of essays, \u003ci\u003eYou Get What You Pay For, \u003c\/i\u003e will be released March 12, 2024. She also is the author of young adult novel \u003ci\u003eWho Put This Song On?\u003c\/i\u003e; and the poetry collections \u003ci\u003eOther People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThere Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMagical Negro\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Shirley.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"One World","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50576203907346,"sku":"9780525511441","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_6ea0cba5-4eaf-4bf2-b836-d0e5adc03f9c.jpg?v=1731991436","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/you-get-what-you-pay-for-essays-9780525511441","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}