The sweeping but focused collection demonstrates Sharma’s commitment to exploring Afro-Asian intimacy in all its beauty and complexity ... Sharma incisively considers the “nothingness of whiteness”: the luxury White people are accorded to make 'something out of nothing,' while Black and Brown stories are always expected to make a statement ... Sharma’s debut is remarkable for its daring, how unafraid it is to eschew rosy visions of racial solidarity. She interrogates the ongoing anti-Blackness of her family, even after her marriage to Quincy, refusing to glaze the collection with the banal optimism that assumes all people of color have joined forces to avenge racism.
Here, we journey to the center of a love story that is as much about romance as it is about Sharma’s Indian identity and wrestling with anti-Blackness ... Sharma shows us that she’s got range, moving seamlessly from a discussion about racism on a national scale to making out with Quincy, for example.
Just as impressive as Sharma’s composed, polished, and wholly sincere writing is her range of topics, including mental health, the model minority, police brutality, familial trauma, and COVID-19’s anti-East Asian racism.
It’s not that she has nothing to say about their interracial relationship, which Sharma frames in the context of allyship, but there’s not much forward momentum in its unfolding ... The path of allyship unfolds, with some gems along the way.
