Trick Mirror

3.5/5 stars. This book was a lot. Jia is incredibly talented and sound in her research. I appreciate such a delve into resources past and present to inform her opinion and feed into one another about the various topic she addresses in this book. “Reflections on self-delusion” is a correct title for this book because all of the essays address a surface level facade that an individual can put out into the world, but it is the tip of the iceberg and hides much trauma, self-absorption, scam and sadness. My take on this “Self-delusion” and the reason why I picked up this book was because I thought that the author was going to talk about all of the themes she did, but more clearly how they related to her life. While every chapter more or less did to a degree, I wanted more. More ‘I' and ‘me' and ‘my opinion' -s rather than a regurgitation of surgically constructed sentences strung together in a calculated “look at me I'm awesome at research” blanket. I listened to this book through the author's own narration. It fell flat for me because she did not even inflect her voice in those more analytical evidence based chapters, which led me to feel like I was sitting in a lecture class.

Overall this content is fantastic and Jia is an incredibly talented writer. But, to me, her arguments are more convincing when she brings more of her own life experiences into them (like the chapters on sexual assault and being a woman as opposed to say the internet {a chapter she should have not opened up with but rather worked up to... I would have preferred it at the end as a culmination of all discussed throughout the book, but I digress). For many chapters she referenced the same Peace corps abroad trip that she did. For themes of rape and sexual assault, her experience there was more convincing than when she threw it into other chapters. It made me feel like she chose from a select pool of self imagery that she wanted to project out for people to see her as rather than being totally vulnerable in her arguments. Was that on purpose? Yeah maybe. Was she entitled to do it as this is her book and her life she is exposing? Yes, totally. But did the selectiveness make for an unconvincing argument in a fair amount of places? Also, yes.

It is no joke that Jia's life is both colorful and abundant in her own right. I doubt that her experiences are limited to being on a reality show, attending UVA, Peace corps in the Middle East and Jezebel magazine. I really just wanted to hear about all the stuff in between. More of her parents, her partner's relationship with her, and the external things that shaped her and her views.