We're Going To Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True

Union's raw and unflinching portrayal makes you feel like you're getting to know a new friend, or reacquainting yourself with an old one. Each essay brings readers closer into the fold and forces us to question our own truths. We learn about Union's struggle to lead a "double life"—retreating from her blackness to fit in at a mostly white school in California while trying to embrace it among skeptical black friends in Omaha, her internal meanderings over hair and makeup that carry specific cultural weight (Natural hair or weave? Narrow the nose, or…?), and the unequal expectations carried by people of color as they navigate professions that make them an "other." Union also details her experience as a rape survivor and includes these telling lines: "I am grateful I was raped in an affluent neighborhood with an underworked police department (and) overly trained doctors and nurses. The fact that one can be grateful for such things is… ridiculous." Considering that the narrative of sexual violence in the United States largely focuses on white women, Union's voice as a survivor holds unique importance and poignancy. That said, she is much more than this single experience, as her book boldly shows.