The sixth essay in Tolentino's book, "The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams," is a masterpiece. I will be telling everyone I know to read it. Trick Mirror reflects like a prism, alighting all the dark corners of our misshapen egos with Tolentino's signature sincerity-intrepid and sharp and here to wake you the fuck up. Tolentino warns the reader in the introduction that there will be no clean conclusions, that "a well-practiced, conclusive narrative is usually a dubious one." No one is safe from themselves. It's brilliantly operatic because our world is a colossal, continuously refreshing drama, real or otherwise. Tolentino's book-a flawless, triumphant debut from the New Yorker writer who examines our era's blunders with the precision of a surgeon and the dexterity of a docent-illuminates the ways our identities are shaped by technology, politics, the economy, mainstream feminism, literature, religion, and capitalism. The internet lingered on me like a smell as I trudged toward my apartment, trying to distinguish truth from aberration, my self from a performance of my self. I considered reading my book, but by the time I looked up from my phone, my stop had appeared and I was spat out into the sticky night.
I scrolled mindlessly through Instagram, feeling bored with my self-deprecation as I compared my body to the influencers' bodies peacocking on my screen, knowing they were making a buck or two as I sucked my belly in an inch or two. More notifications appeared: Trump tweeted something harmful and distracting, and four news outlets wanted me to know.
On my way home to write this review of Jia Tolentino's collection of essays, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, my phone lit up to notify me that my monthly student loan payment had been accepted, making a mosquito-sized dent in the Goliath swamp of my student debt.
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