The Way You Make Me Feel

Love in Black and Brown

By: Nina Sharma

Narrated by: Nina Sharma

Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

“Nina Sharma’s thoughtful debut is equal parts memoir, criticism, and long-ranging conversation with a new friend. A love story for the ruminative reader that is generous with both scrutiny and romance.”—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

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.

©2024 Nina Sharma (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Sensual, sharp, and raw, Sharma’s memoir digs deep into the roots intertwining anti-Black racism and America’s South Asian diaspora, unearthing what often remains unsaid when establishing true allyship . . . Through the lens of being in an interracial relationship, Sharma cleverly draws on pop culture, political discourse, and academic writing to deliver social criticism that persistently highlights the racial discrimination running beneath the surface of American policies and social conventions. Just as impressive as Sharma's composed, polished, and wholly sincere writing is her range of topics, including mental health, the model minority, police brutality, familial trauma, and COVID-19’s anti-East Asian racism—the breadth of all of which illustrates the complex racial fabric of America today.”—Booklist

“A powerfully forthright portrait of an interracial relationship that doubles as an insightful investigation into the history of racism in America.”—Publishers Weekly

“Nina Sharma is an ardent, fiercely intelligent explorer of American life in all its hybrid complexity. Indian American and African American worlds collide and collaborate; so do love and anger, art and politics, fear and ambition, grief and wit. ‘Collection’ is too temperate a word for these essays: each is an act in a suspenseful, still-unfolding play.”—Margo Jefferson, author of Constructing a Nervous System