#23: We Play Ourselves
on Jen Silverman’s debut novel, plus a V-Day appreciation of Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird
Hello and happy almost-Valentine’s Day weekend.
I recommend celebrating by reading this GQ piece on Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird and watching the accompanying 43 Questions video. Alternatively, just take a few minutes to stare at these photos from their cover shoot:
It’s a lot to take in, as is this absolutely insane remix of queer icon Rebecca Black’s Friday, featuring Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 3OH!3 (??), released on the song’s 10 year anniversary yesterday.
I only made it through ~30 seconds, but would encourage you to give her very gay single Girlfriend a listen instead if you haven’t already. It’s a bop.
Also, in JoJo Siwa news (which was a real hit last week), she announced her one month anniversary with her girlfriend on both Instagram and TikTok on Monday. Congrats to them!
And now, onto a book rec.
Yesterday I published an interview with author Jen Silverman, which you can read here if you haven’t yet done so. Then, keep scrolling for my full review of her debut novel.
— Becca
We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
Fiction, February 2021
We first meet Cass, a young playwright once hailed as “a fierce new voice,” as she arrives in Los Angeles to avoid the fallout of a scandal back in the New York theatre world. After moving in with a friend, she’s quickly pulled into the orbit of her next-door neighbor, a charismatic filmmaker named Caroline whose current project focuses on a group of girls in a violent teenage fight club.
As she begins spending all of her time on this ethically questionable project, it becomes clear that Cass is somewhat obsessed with success. She’s also more-than-somewhat obsessed with her nemesis, fellow playwright Tara-Jean Slater.
Like all good nemeses, Tara-Jean Slater is annoyingly successful. She’s a senior at Yale and has already earned more critical acclaim than Cass has, a decade into her career. More annoyingly, she doesn’t even seem to care.
This obsession culminates in the aforementioned scandal, the details of which we don’t learn until almost halfway through the book. I don’t want to ruin anything here, but it’s a little unhinged.
The level of absurdity in that scene is in line with the type of humor throughout the book, which is part of what makes it a thoroughly enjoyable read. If you find the concept of a cardboard cutout of RBG staged in the background of a “documentary” about a teen girl fight club funny, for example, you’ll love it as much as I did.
Silverman also does a great job of writing about perceptions of bisexuality in a way that feels incredibly accurate. As she mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, bisexuals and other people with fluid sexualities can engender a “constant dubiousness ... a constant unwillingness to take [them] at face value.”
But while other characters may attempt to stick Cass with a particular label or consider her “confused” because of her bisexuality, Cass herself doesn’t find her sexuality perplexing. And even though her sexuality isn’t the focal point of her story, it’s refreshing to have a bisexual protagonist who’s comfortable with her own desires.
Queer points:
+3 for some asexual rep (a rarity!)
+7 for a good bit of unrequited queer love for an older French woman
+22 for a handful of references to Cate Blanchett
Buy it from your favorite bookstore on Bookshop