Here For It by R. Eric Thomas

"I understood that a book could be many things at once - without conflict or contradiction - long before I realized it about people."
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I'd seen Here For It by R. Eric Thomas on booksta and been told it was laugh out loud funny, but I didn't know I NEEDED it until Mary Laura Philpott called it a memoir in essays; I promptly raced to check it out online. I colored, went for drives, and waited in line for my grocery pick-ups while listening to Thomas share moments of his life that are alternately bizarre, relatable, poignant, and hilarious. I did, in fact, laugh out loud in my car while the person in the lane next to me wondered if the quarantine was getting to me, or if I was just slightly deranged. It was a delight to listen to.
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Have you ever read the first page of a book and just KNOWN that you were going to love it? Here for It begins with an epigraph by Mary Oliver - and I just knew. These essays explore the intersection of Thomas' blackness, queerness, and Christianity, his relationship to social media, and how he became a writer (including that time his satire went very, very wrong). In my experience, essay and short story collections can be a mixed bag, but there's not a single essay in Here For It that I didn't like, although the eponymous essay Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul In America was probably my favorite. If, like me, you could use an uplifting read right about now, reach for this one.
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TW: suicide, racism, homophobia