Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Sunday, Dec. 6, 2020--San Antonio

Real Life by Brandon Taylor is the story of a young black graduate student who grew up in Alabama and is now at a major Midwestern university.   It was a relief for him to leave Alabama due to the systemic discrimination he faced both for being black and for being gay.  But the former still exists in the Midwest where he is expected to be less intelligent, less capable, and less dedicated in his student lab research activities.  Like many people of color have said is a necessary ingredient to living their lives, he studies and works harder and for longer hours to try to give no excuse for their expectations to be true, yet they are still assumed by a competitive student and the lab supervisor.  He is friends with a cohort group of graduate science students who welcome him into their fold.  In his 3rd year of studies, he knows these friends quite well and spends time with them, but he has no one special in his life.  The one member of the group to whom he feels an attraction is straight.  The book covers topics such as their daily lives, the personal interactions with each other, the limitations of what they let the others know about themselves, etc.  At times, the detailed information about the lab work and even the detailed conversations between the friends seems to cause the story to drag with no real purpose.  But at other times, I found I didn't want to put the book down.  The book was a finalist for the Booker Prize and a New York Times notable book of the year.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.