Greedy
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A hilarious and whip-smart collection of essays, offering an intimate look at bisexuality, gender, and, of course, sex. Perfect for fans of Lindy West, Samantha Irby, and Rebecca Solnit—and anyone who wants, and deserves, to be seen. If Jen Winston knows one thing for sure, it’s that she’s bisexual. Or wait—maybe she isn’t? Actually, she definitely is. Unless…she’s not? Jen’s provocative, laugh-out-loud debut takes us inside her journey of self-discovery, leading us through stories of a childhood “girl crush,” an onerous quest to have a threesome, and an enduring fear of being bad at sex. Greedy follows Jen’s attempts to make sense of herself as she explores the role of the male gaze, what it means to be “queer enough,” and how to overcome bi stereotypes when you’re the posterchild for all of them: greedy, slutty, and constantly confused. With her clever voice and clear-eyed insight, Jen draws on personal experiences with sexism and biphobia to understand how we all can and must do better. She sheds light on the reasons women, queer people, and other marginalized groups tend to make ourselves smaller, provoking the question: What would happen if we suddenly stopped? Greedy shows us that being bisexual is about so much more than who you’re sleeping with—it’s about finding stability in a state of flux and defining yourself on your own terms. This book inspires us to rethink the world as we know it, reminding us that Greedy was a superpower all along.
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I flew through this book, partly because I did identify with a lot of the experiences and partly because I am a trash Zillennial so Jen's sense of humor soaked in internet memes and self deprecation really worked for me. There were several really poignant essays and concepts: The Power Dynamic, Neon Sweater. Knots (all in a row!), A Queer Love Story. There were also resonant parts of other essays. Jen's memoir encompasses queerness but also privilege, politics, parriarchy, technology etc., a kind of overlap that feels necessary to me.
Some small complaints. Jen pulls influence from Shiri Eisner whose book similarly has some resonant points and also some big flops. Jen also apparently has only had exclusively bad experiences with lesbians, and makes several offhanded quips about how lesbians don't like them. (These are mostly jokes and obviously the author's experiences are their own, but still.) (I'm disgustingly in love with a lesbian and thus defensive. Lesbians are great! Dating in New York just apparently sucks no matter which genders you're into.)
Some other reviewers have mentioned Jen's passages about privilege and unlearning. I feel split on these because while on one hand I think it's refreshing to have someone own up to being a clueless white person who did racist things and is trying to do better, and on the other hand the inserts felt performative in some ways (especially because... she is writing and making money on a book in a space/platform that QTPOC authors are often denied). But also, writing this book without acknowledgment of privilege or fuckups or the impacts of racism & race on queerness would be worse, and nonfiction books written explicitly about bisexuality already seem scarce. I'm not sure white people “unlearning” in public forums/platforms is ever not going to be somehow performative. For this reason I would say that anyone who doesn't want to deal with “unlearning” white people can skip this one, but there are essays and moments worth reading if you don't mind (or if you are or have been that same cringey “unlearning” white person... I have been, probably still am).
Jen doesn't write anything more revelatory than the queer theorists she often quotes. But couched in the narratives of their experiences, I resonated with many of the essays in a visceral way that sometimes doesn't happen for me with theory.