Issa Rae's 'Misadventures' awkward but charming

Comedian/writer/YouTube star/budding TV talent Issa Rae wears many hats, but the one she's most interested in sporting with pride is that of Awkward Black Girl.

Rae's ABG is the persona that's laid the foundation for her ever-expanding brand, but this is not just some convenient alter ego. She really is awkward, which she reminds us time and again in her collection of autobiographical essays and musings, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

There's her total inability to dance — a black-girl no-no, she says — her cringe-worthy romantic adventures, struggles with her hair and weight, her aversion to eating in public, and her life as a fashion victim. Rae does have enough awkward street cred to fill a book.

"My introduction to the Los Angeles fashion scene wasn't friendly, by any means," she writes of her teenaged affinity for head-to-toe color coordination that caused a scare while visiting a friend. "Solid colors were my best friend, so when Ashley invited me to hang out at her house one crisp summer afternoon, I put on a red shirt, red cotton shorts, red tennis shoes and a red scrunchy, and walked to her home."

Problem was, Ashley lived in South Central, a suburb of Los Angeles infamous in the 1980s and '90s for turf wars between rival gangs the Bloods, whose clothing color of choice is red, and the blue-favoring Crips.

In all of her awkward glory, Rae had no clue why her friend frantically pulled her into the house lest she get shot for wearing the wrong color in a Crips neighborhood. "Word association. Context clues. Tales from the Crypt. Crypt keepers. Cemeteries. Dead people. Funerals. Was my outfit somehow disrespecting the dead in some L.A. way? I didn't ask."

That kind of charming cluelessness is how, for the most part, Rae's recollections of her childhood, college years and transition into adulthood come across in Misadventures. She's never afraid to share her most mortifying moments to prove to us that her brand is authentic.

As pitch-perfect as her best work here is, however, some essays and observations seem tacked on, and at times the book becomes repetitive. A more polished edit would have helped.

And then there are the handful of "glossaries" and "guides" Rae includes, some of which rehash what we've seen in the Awkward Black Girl YouTube Web series that first got her noticed in 2011. The "ABG Guide: Connecting with Other Blacks" is hilarious, but some of her other attempts at schooling the reader in gawkiness seem forced, and, pardon us, a little bit awkward.

This unevenness makes you long for more of the strong, guffaw-out-loud essays that showcase why Rae, who just scored a comedy pilot with HBO, is the Next Big Thing. The other stuff, awkward or otherwise, feels like fluff.

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

By Issa Rae

Atria

2.5 stars out of four