In Parts 1-3, we meet our main character Wallace. He is a black gay man living in the midwest while attending grad school for biochemistry. Our first introduction to Wallace tells us that his father has died recently and he isn’t even sure how to cope with that. We also get to meet his group of “friends”. It’s hard to really call them his friends as it seems that most of them don’t really care about his well being. Even worse, he is at odds with some of them as he is the only black person and their sensitivity is non-existent. Throughout these parts we see how Wallace is forced to suffer through microaggressions in his workplace, ignorance from his friends, and just blatant racism.

A large part of these sections, though, is the blooming relationship with Miller. They once had a tenuous relationship after Miller made an insensitive joke about his race, but after a day at the lake Wallace seems to soften to him. After Miller rubs his eyes with jalapeño fingers, Wallace takes it upon himself to assist Miller in the bathroom which leads to a more intimate moment between them after Wallace confesses he doesn’t even want to be in the program anymore. This leads to Miller going home with Wallace, and they spend a night together. The relationship between them (though sweet) is odd. Wallace is emotionally reserved – bordering on emotionally unavailable. Meanwhile, Miller is still claiming that he is straight which can’t bode well for this relationship in the future. But nonetheless, Miller seems to be the one who reaches out more in the relationship- making sure Wallace was okay after the encounter with the racist coworker, telling Wallace to call him, finding Wallace on his break and having a seat with him. They seem like an odd pair, but it also seems that their mutual attraction might be rooted in their sameness.

Overall, we see Wallace struggle a lot with his mental and emotional health. From the start, he shows himself to be extremely closed off (not wanting to see his friends at the lake) and resistant to making new relationships. He hadn’t told anyone his father died as they didn’t have a good relationship and the mourning process is confusing for him since the relationship was so muddy. As mentioned earlier, a big part of this story has to deal with Wallace’s identity. Though he doesn’t get much flack for being gay since there seems to be a large community at the school, his race is definitely a problem for a lot of people. People make small comments like Miller or Yngve, or they’re blatantly racist like Dana who seems to have a problem with Wallace because she feels inferior to him. He even suffers because of his superior who seems to insist that he is bad at his lab work when we’ve been told he’s actually very competent. All in all, this added weight of Wallace being black as well as gay is going to of course play a massive part in his life and the story we will be seeing.

Things I Liked:

• The fact that this book is really about how hard it is to be a double minority and the near constant suffering it is to be always put down
• Miller and Wallace’s relationship

Things I Didn’t Like:

• The long spans of lab speak
• How messed up the dialogue can be sometimes as in I’m not always sure who is speaking when