RaveVQRBrandon Taylor’s Real Life is both a break from this tired obsession with \'realness\' [of Blackness] and a meditation on what it might mean in a fuller sense, outside of a reductive understanding. It is less a novel steeped in the subconscious anti-Blackness of highbrow art and realist literature and more one in conversation with questions of personhood and social death ... It is perhaps one of the finest Afropessimist pieces of art, if we are allowing pieces of art to be made in this tradition. I may be applying this label too broadly, but if we are to talk about a work that explicitly outlines the themes of Afropessimism, then I would place Real Life as one of the foremost, alongside more established examples such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
