‘Fam’ by Venita Blackburn

Fam by Venita Blackburn, 2018

The magic trick:

A perplexing and perplexed portrait of social media

What will future generations make of our obsession with social media? What do current generations make of it?

Stories like “Fam” might help. Here, our narrator tells us about a loved one who is letting the judgments and validations of social media dictate her behavior. Interestingly, even as the story provides an excellent example of social media in action, it doesn’t really have any answers for us.

If future generations look to this story for explanations about early 21st century social media, they might only find a story that is on the same questions.

And that’s quite a trick on Blackburn’s part.

The selection:

My lil sister/niece/granddaughter/baby cousin doesn’t know she’s pretty, so she asks everybody, one post at a time. Her mom showed up at her high school graduation, no one had seen her in eight years. Mothers like that never know how to dress, too much fake jewelry, fake hair, and a big-ass fake leather purse still too small for all her shame and addictions to everything else.

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