The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown

by Nina Sharma

A hilarious and moving memoir in essays about love and allyship, told through one Asian and Black interracial relationship

When Nina Sharma meets Quincy while hitching a ride to a friend’s Fourth of July barbecue, she spots a favorite book, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior , in the back seat of his cramped car, and senses a sadness from him that’s all too familiar to her. She is immediately intrigued—who is this man? In The Way You Make Me Feel , Sharma chronicles her and Quincy’s love story, and in doing so, examines how their Black and Asian relationship becomes the lens through which she moves through and understands the world.

In a series of sensual and sparkling essays, Sharma reckons with caste, race, colorism, and mental health, moving from her seemingly idyllic suburban childhood through her and Quincy’s early sweeping romance in the so-called postracial Obama years and onward to their marriage. Growing up, she hears her parents talk about the racism they experienced at the hands of white America—and as an adult, she confronts the complexities of American racism and the paradox of her family’s disappointment when she starts dating a Black man. While watching The Walking Dead , Sharma dives into the eerie parallels between the brutal death of Steven Yeun’s character and the murder of Vincent Chin. She examines the trailblazing Mira Nair film Mississippi Masala , revolutionary in its time for depicting a love story between an Indian woman and a Black man on screen, and considers why interracial relationships are so often assumed to include white people. And as she and Quincy decide whether to start a family, they imagine a universe in which Vice President Kamala Harris could possibly be their time-traveling daughter.

Written with a keen critical eye and seamlessly weaving in history, pop culture, and politics, The Way You Make Me Feel reaffirms the idea that allyship is an act of true love.

Genres: Memoir, Essays, Nonfiction, Race

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2024

About the author

Nina Sharma’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, Longreads, and The Margins. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she served as the programs director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches at Columbia and Barnard College. She is a proud cofounder of the all–South Asian women’s improv group Not Your Biwi. The Way You Make Me Feel is her first book, publishing with Penguin Press on May 7, 2024.

Reviews

[Maya Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an incredible book! Prof Sharma is an inspiration always <3

[Sruthi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited to read this book because of the lack of discourse surrounding (very prevalent) anti blackness in the Indian community. But I was unfortunately very disappointed by this book :/. I feel weird criticizing memoirs because I’m very aware that this is a real person’s lived experience, but the issues I had with Nina Sharma’s commentary were so glaring it made it hard to finish the book.

There are many essays that focus specifically on anti blackness in her family but not once did she truly challenge her parents on any of their views. Multiple essays also talk about how her parents are ashamed to show a picture of her husband to their relatives because of his dreads. While I did enjoy hearing about how symbolic dreadlocks have been in the civil rights and resistance movements, it felt pointless to outline this to readers of the book and never ever with the people who are being fully racist right in front of you. I also think it’s wild that someone whose father has MULTIPLE anecdotes of hanging out with trump at the country club he’s part of, who has a niece who refers to trumps son as “my friend Barron” has not outlined a single confrontation (or even just a conversation) about anti blackness and racism with her parents. What is the point of writing an entire book of essays on interracial solidarity when all of the problems you’re discussing go unchecked at home?

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this collection of auto-biographical essays was a mixed experience for me. (Pun intended.) Nina Sharma is a daughter of immigrant Indians, a Millennial on the cusp of Gen Z; I am a Boomer 1. So her emphasis is necessarily on the experiences of growing up in America during the 1980s but her actually excellent use of pop cultural music, movies and TV shows in those years left me feeling left out.

The pun on being mixed is due to Nina identifying as Asian while Quinn, the love of her life, identifies as Black though he is light-skinned. This book hinges on the many intricate details involved in being an American who is not White!

By the end of the book, I was impressed. The way she could mix up the love story between her and Quinn with the cultural references, the daily news, her life, and their struggles got to me. It made for a delicious, hilarious yet heart breaking alchemy.

The chapter on Kamala Harris was worth the price of the book!

Thanks to the Otherppl Book Club for featuring this as the July 2024 selection. Brad Listi’s interview with Nina Sharma on his Otherppl podcast was also enlightening.

[Writer Ching Ching Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to Other People's Podcast and decided to read this book by Nina Sharma.

Being a writer myself working hard on my first book, among other things, I read to learn about her book structure. I do that with all books, but the style of Nina Sharma's is particularly inspiring to me. It was wonderful.

Her storyline, the love story between her and Quincy, especially in the first few chapters, reads like a novel to me. I rarely read a memoir that's page-turning.

The first chapter is about color, brown, black and all. The kissable chapter is about the beginning of her relationship with Quincy, and all the while weaving in her own sex life, her mental health down to the suicidal attempt(s) (the third line, sub-line, or however way readers want to see it). They all make so much sense!!! So beautiful. So much to learn from.

By the time readers get to police brutality against black people, we're on board. We are in this tell-me-anything-and-however-you-want-it situation. So brilliant.

Her interrogation of herself about whether she's allowed to talk about black violence is thoughtful. Being a minority writer myself writing about racism too and the complexity of intersectionality with classism, this is what I hope to achieve in my writing as well.

On quitting smoking, I like how she uses this to tell her stories about everything else, including, of course, what's happening with Quincy - "I can just light a candle with this lighter" - to her own busy work during graduate school organizing Asian American Writer's Workshop. Meanwhile, bouncing off names such as Alexander Chee and Jhumpa Lahiri so readers, or maybe especially readers like me, also an Asian writer, find an intimate connection to what kind of literary environment she is in. I feel instantly connected with all these names I love.

The Vincent Chin chapter gets right down to my gut. Especially the last few sentences "you cozy in there?" And the repetition of "Walker bait" - so good.

Towards the end of the book, I like a lot of incidents of repetition. Aside from the walker bait, in the Lovings chapter, Sharma repeats "it makes no nod…" Gut-punching effect.
If you are also a writer, you know what I mean about looping structure, something Nina Sharma did so well in this book. Looping is about multiple threads weaving together in a chapter, and sometimes across chapters, even the entire book. It's a structure I love the most, but I can only say I am currently in the weeds… What I am learning from Nina Sharma is how thematically focused each chapter is. All chapters are coherent in each of their central themes, however different the directions of the two or three lines of narratives she's pulling.

Finally, if I may, or if I were the editor and this book still had a chance now to revise, I'd say strengthen the middle.
At some point, a bit more than halfway through the book, maybe because the steaminess of the love story is gone, replaced by analytical cultural critique, less and less about their relationship and the what-happened, I admit that since the allure was so strong at the beginning, to me - yes to me (I might have been chasing romance themes these days, worth noting) - so I was hoping the arc could be stronger midway through, especially when the momentum has been switching to larger systematic ideas now, which is very much necessary. Again, reading as a writer, I ask, how could we balance that?

[Sangita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nina Sharma explores mental health, establishing herself, and relationships in a "post racial" world as the daughter of immigrants through a series of essays that are both deeply personal and extremely relatable. She writes with humor and empathy and nuance.

Aside - it was particularly bittersweet to read the last essay about legacy and IVF and Kamala Harris the weekend she could/should have been inaugurated as president.

[Jessie S · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can say is, read this book. Especially if you consider yourself to be an ally!

[Sarah Ithipathachai · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Lots of interesting connections made here between immigrant & Black experiences through history, but the structure and writing style just weren't really for me, and I think they may have worked against my investment in the author's actual experience and relationship

[Books Amongst Friends · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the outset, Sharma's depiction of her relationship with her Black husband felt unsettling at times. Throughout the book, I sensed a pervasive silence around her husband's experiences and a discomfort with engaging deeply with his Blackness beyond her own viewpoint of allyship. I found it interesting that she didn’t explore aspects of Colorism being that her husband is a very fair black man who most would probably assume is biracial. Not to mention how colorism has played a huge part historically and socially in both Black and Asian communities. This further caught my attention when she brought up the Loving Virginia case being that it was a white man with a black woman that was very fair and how passing was prevalent at the time. It made me wonder about her husband’s relationship with race and how he was navigating their marriage. As a Virginia resident and a black women, I always think how different that case may have been had she been a darker skinned black women. Reading this, I felt the same. How different would their story have been if Quincy blackness wasn’t something others felt they could mute. (Ex: the hair cutting)

While some themes are well-fleshed out and thought-provoking, such as her exploration of historical injustices and societal complexities, others feel less explored or fall short of deeper engagement. It was unfortunate to read how she sometimes ignored evident issues within her topics, such as her comparison involving Glenn from "The Walking Dead." While the character of Glenn, portrayed by Steven Yeun, was laudably devoid of many Asian stereotypes, his story arc was simultaneously a play the model minority and his proximity to whiteness. The majority of that Glenn’s story revolves around a white women, and his ability to be likable, blend in, and loyal. It’s too late when Glenn’s characters starts to be explored that he is killed off. Though like many fans who only missed Glenn in death, Sharma's glorification of Glenn's assimilated character ignores his contrast with other characters of color and the broader context of systemic erasure faced by Asian representation. This comparison between a fictional character and a real-life tragedy, like the death of Vincent Chin, didn't resonate well due to its complexity IMO.

Sharma's portrayal of her relationship with her Black husband, although touching on important issues, sometimes lacks the depth needed to fully confront the nuances of interracial dynamics and identity. Sharma’s familial dynamic was also troublesome. Not in a way that isn’t common, but uncomfortable in a way that felt unfortunate to read. She seemed to rely more on silence than active defense of her Black husband.

Despite these shortcomings, "The Way You Make Me Feel" serves as a testament to Sharma's commitment to activism and her willingness to engage in these critical conversations about race and love.

[el · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oof, where to begin. Idk why someone would write a big book like this that ultimately makes them look like they fetishize their own relationship by viewing it always through the lens of everything "Afro-Asian" (there's literally a part where the author describes a dinner of salmon and sweet potato fries as a black-and-brown ritual of theirs—is this how you see your relationship?! How exhausting.) The parts that are historical/social commentary are often totally disjointed where the history the author is referencing doesn't actually speak directly to the instance at hand, except for it's vaguely about racism, ultimately making the argument ahistorical. I felt like it sadly ended up being weak as a memoir and weak as a piece of cultural criticism. I won't go into detail, but the politics are alarmingly liberal and the Kamala chapter is disturbing without a mention of her record as a prosecutor (other than as a "first")! Doubling down on a hate crimes framework. I'm honestly confused about whole sections where the author is "reflecting" on race while not actually having these conversations IRL, with her family, her husband. Not much reflection on class. It just felt like she didn't have the range to actually write something interesting about how South Asian and Black histories are deeply imbricated and how to locate solidarity in that shared history (there's a part where she shames her family's anti-Blackness and sees Quincy's family's respectability politics as qualitatively different, rather than exploring how these might be connected), rather than just through allyship, which frankly I thought we abandoned as a liberal buzzword.

"This man, who as I stretch out on Justine's couch, has taken my feet in his hands. I try to steal a glance to see what Aisha thinks. She doesn't seem to notice anything. But then again Aisha is a poet, a great poet, the kind who knows how to leave out all the right things." (52)

"Living as a minority in America is living in a house laughing at you and living as a model minority is joining in that laughter." (95)

"Just as I started high school, a young South Asian boy in a rival private school got expelled for trying to steal a standardized test. He broke a window with a bare hand. They found his dried blood on the safe where the test was kept. 'I think we wanted to get caught,' my tennis teacher, Pattie, would say to me. Pattie, a trim white woman who looked like Chris Evert, had a tennis court in the back of her house, and her driveway was often lined with the luxury sedans and SUVs of well-to-do suburban parents." (96)

[Lisa Rosenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much to Random House for allowing me access to an early copy of this collection of exquisitely penned, emotionally resonant personal essays that simply blew me away!

This is the kind of book you need to discuss with all your POC writer friends across generations. THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL is a memoir about relationships: between an Indian American woman and her Black American Partner, with her Indian family (some of whom have some strong feelings about her having a Black American partner), and also with the numerous white-centered spaces she encounters.
Some essays document Sharma’s complicated mental health journey, others enlighten us about how it feels to be brown in white spaces, as well as brown but not Black in Black spaces.
This memoir is full of pain, growth, and also fun, weaving in pop culture, social activism, and some really hilarious moments of cross-cultural, cross-racial and cross-generational miscommunications. Sharma shares her POV on a quandary often experienced by children of nonwhite immigrant parents: to carry on the familial culture, while also living an idealized often white-approximate Americanness.
Addressing the political juxtaposition of race and class, class and caste, caste and race, Sharma also tackles such wide-ranging topics as Black hair discrimination, traditional Indian weddings, Michael Jackson, The Walking Dead, When Harry Met Sally, and Mississippi Masala. She seeks herself and her story in American popular culture, finding a void to fill, creating her own platforms, such as the all-South Asian women’s improv group “I am not your Biwi.”
There’s a vulnerability and a playfulness to Sharma’s language that makes the reading such an intimate experience while also being intellectually invigorating. The author’s interior exploration is just as much about language as it is about the relationships she describes: with girl school mates, cool record store white boys, sisters, an Uncle, America. Best of all, Sharma doesn’t explain; she invites you to join in her own curiosity about the self, race, music, love.
Highly recommended!

[Stephanie Pitsirilos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was up half the night finishing this because it's one of those books that prevent you from sleeping until you finish it, don't even try. I kept waking Cyrus up: Oh, no! What do you think will happen next? Cyrus! oh yes, this happened! This is so sweet! At some point I realized I needed to a) let him sleep b) finish the book myself because clearly I wasn't going to bed, I couldn't even watch my alien videos. I was too invested and worried and happy for its characters. Who are real people, this is a memoir (but also history and cultural criticism).

The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown by Nina Sharma is a spectacular memoir that sparkles with self honesty, humor, and intellect--no matter what's at the other end of its lens. The lens is Nina mostly, of course, but this also means Quincy. It also means family, US history, a Black and Asian relationship, and the life of academics in literature (with all those backgrounds in mind). A haircut before the wedding is not "just" a haircut, and Nina breaks this down with both American Black history and "Indian hair". She does this contextualization throughout, a demonstration of our human layers that make a cigar, well, not just a cigar. (Does anyone use this expression anymore? I can see Data on the Enterprise going through his Freud phase saying this).

I use the word sparkle because that's what is emitted from these pages: a soul sense of two special people who are in love and live love, and want the world to exist in a just love. And who know how to have a good time as they exist in this mission and wish. Who hurt together and thrive together. In each other's arms.

This is a WONDERFUL book on a supportive partnership navigating an ever changing wacky world. This is what bell hooks was talking about in what our partnerships can be, especially the ones between man and woman.

Gift this to your friends on love quests, on mental health journeys, for an exploration on interracial relationships beyond what we assume in the US is defaulted to be "white AND...", for growing up America. For the weight of the journeys our bodies bear. Including the ambiguous journey to birth new life.

[Mikala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so, maybe I should have listened to an interview with the author before picking this book up. I know so little about TV and movies (especially horror) that a huge portion of this book was completely lost on me. Mississippi Masala was the only movie I’ve actually seen. The Walking Dead, Lost, Madmen, and some others should be required viewing as well to really appreciate some sections of the book.
Of course, I did live through the same time period in America that she describes. Her take as a brown college student then partner to a black man gives her a unique perspective that I appreciated hearing.
I took to heart her message towards the end of the book - talk to your parents! There really should be a manual for this sort of thing and it’s not so easy as just handing them a tri-fold brochure with some catchy graphics and calling it job done.
Overall, it’s a good quick read - mostly memoir as she struggles to recapture the mental health challenges that plagued her teen years, her supportive, loving and racist family, and her biracial relationship in a society that only values white lives and white on white love. The time jumping was a bit confusing for me. I, personally, would have preferred a more focused narrative with specific sections of the book focusing on specific themes or a more linear time format.

[Iris (Yi Youn) Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though written in an approachable and conversational style infused with pop culture, Sharma's essay collection/memoir deals with heavy subjects like anti-Black sentiment and colorism within the South Asian American community, casteism, and mental health. Quincy's presence is a calm, grounding force and throughline in the collection.
The chapters did flip back and forth between what seemed like standalone essays and chapters that left you hanging and felt a bit incomplete.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Nina Sharma is a great writer--this book hooked me from the jump. But as a series of essays strung together into a mostly chronological narrative, by the end I basically knew how each essay would be structured, which kind of killed both suspense and enjoyment. Also it ends with the January 6 coup and a (lovely, considered) discussion of Kamala Harris, and I just cannot stomach American politics right now0--further making the final pages of the book a slog for me, personally.

[Emily Menez · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a thoughtfully-written memoir. I was impressed how Sharma combined personal stories, harrowing remembrances of hate crimes, commentary on modern TV, honest reflections on mental health, and so much more. It was guided by Sharma's love story with her future husband Quincy. There was so much that was heartfelt and heavy, as well as light-hearted and humorous.

[Fatema · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. Nuanced, vulnerable, funny at times. I appreciated the critical thinking and deep dives. Saw some unique connections between Black and Asian solidarities I hadn’t seen before. If you enjoyed Minor Feelings, you’ll like this!

[Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this book. It is unapologetically messy and real in both the best and worst ways. Worst because Nina really confronts herself about things, even if she doesn’t confront anyone else. That’s hard to do and I admire her for it. It’s heartbreaking and sweet and amazing.

[Jen Louie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about Nina's will to honor herself and carry the complexity of living and loving in today's socio-political landscape with more traditional/conservative immigrant parents. But too often felt like skimming through the details and was not totally gripped by the writing.

[PKS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Nina for writing and sharing your narrative. The historical detail and vulnerability demonstrated throughout your book is moving and appreciated. We can all learn from your lived experience.

[Kelly Pramberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a raw and beautiful book. I liked the dual POV story. It was powerful and thought provoking. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Susie Silvers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I would recommend this book.

[Ani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memoir meets cultural criticism and social commentary - Literally all of my favorite things

[Christa Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

An essay collection that is personal but also thoughtful about bigger issues.

[Kate (kate_reads_)]

I was intrigued by the synopsis but unfortunately the author’s writing style isn’t for me and I decided to DNF. Thank you to the publisher for the free ebook to review.

[Natalie Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley and Penguin Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This memoir/essay collection touches on several subjects related to race, love, history, and pop culture. She starts with her own live - her love story with her partner, Quincy, who is black and the author being South Asian and touches on her early life in suburbia in which is encountered caste, colorism and mental health issues. She also looks at TV and movies and how Asian and Black characters are portrayed and the murder of Vincent Chin. I appreciated her perspective and learning of another person's experiences in America, especially the idea of allyship.

[Meena · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Proma · Rating 5 out of 5]

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