We’re Going to Need More Wine By Gabrielle Union

Gabrielle Union’s ‘We’re Going to Need More Wine’ is by definition the ultimate girl talk book. In these collections of stories, which are not only hilarious and real, but raw and humbling; she tackles a series of subjects that readers can relate to both directly and indirectly, whilst also being very critical of her past self. From growing up in a predominately white neighbourhood, delving into her parents marriage and her own (first marriage), social issues and her assault and issues with control, Garbielle invites us to pull up a glass of our favourite wine and have a seat at her table as she bares parts of her soul with us. So join us while we explore a few of the not necessarily lessons, but things we’ve learnt from her experiences. Be warned...there are spoilers ahead.

The Dual Consciousness

Very early on in the book Garbielle introduces to Pleasanton, CA, where her father moved the family out after a job transfer. She describes being one of the few black students in her school and trying hard not to stand out, especially after being labelled ‘nigger Nickie’ by one of the boys and being apprehensive of drawing attention to herself if she befriended the other black girls, forming a super brown group. By trying no to fit into the black stereotypes Gabrielle becomes the almost sort-of token black friend, with her cool white friends using the “You’re not like them” line to explain away her skin colour.

She also talks about convincing her parents to let her spend the summers in Omaha with her grandmother and cousin Kenyatta, where it becomes clear to her that she isn’t the cool black person her Pleasanton friends assume her to be, but that in Omaha she can more freely explore her blackness. Gabrielle describes the ease at which she was able to switch back into her blackness with every summer she went back to Omaha, but also the ways in which drugs and gangs began to change the town and the people she had befriended.

Double consciousness is something that most black people have experience with. The number of people like us that we have contact with between our professional and personal environments usually vary quite differently and so code switching becomes natural. As Gabrielle explained it can be difficult to share stories from your personal life with the professional group because you are aware, even if only slightly, that they are likely to construe these stories from a perspective different to what you try to bring across.

Sexuality

If there’s one thing that Gabrielle Union is very candid about in this book is her openness with sexuality and how women need to have a healthier relationship with their sexuality and how that comes with exploration. She begins the conversation with the dreaded and very ambiguous sex/menstraution talk that schools usually give to the female population. ‘Your period is coming and you can get pregnant’ is usually the gist of these conversations and depending on how open the women around you are with sexuality, in Gabrielle’s case not very (coming for a predominantly Catholic and Mormon town), that is usually all you get. Luckily for her, they had author Judy Blume who confronted topics such as puberty in adolescent girls from menstruation to masturbation and sex. She reveals that she took control after one of her friends became pregnant, taking condoms from a clinic and passing them onto her female friends when needed, as they were scared of being caught with them.

That’s how it went. I became the condom dispensary, bringing them to school and to parties whenever I got the heads-up. Adults weren’t looking out for us. They assumed that we knew we could get pregnant and wouldn’t risk it by actually having sex. But even when you know better, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do better. That’s a lie parent tell themselves so they don’t have to admit their kids have sex. And they do. They will either live with fear and baggies and abortions, or live with knowledge and condoms.

She goes on to speak about how blase the new generation kids are about having sex or partaking in sexual acts and challenging the young women to ensure that they actions are reciprocated as sex should be enjoyed and about both parties pleasure.

“ “Look, you can’ take your pussy with you,” I said. “Use it. Enjoy it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, until you run out of dicks. Travel to other countries and have sex. Explore the full range of everything and feel zero shame. Don’t let society’s narrow scope about what they think you should do with your vagina determine what you do with your vagina.” “

Surviving Sexual Assault

In ‘Code 261’ Gabrielle talks about being sexually assaulted at the age of 19 whilst working at Payless one night. She speaks about how her father and sister show up to the scene and the haunting look on her fathers face, a look she significantly identifies as the moment her father saw her as damaged, as a victim. Gabrille discloses her ensuing PTSD effects, how soon after the incident she was unable to bring herself to leave the house for a year, how she became obsessed with timing and panicked about being out after dark if she’d lost track of time. She opens up about being able to find hope again after joining a UCLA Rape Crisis Centre group therapy session, where she found a sort of comfort in having people she could relate to and in seeing these women still be successful after the fact. Gabrielle opens up even further about fame and her PTSD, how her PTSD is triggered when grabbed by fans and how she has panic attacks about disappointing fans when trying to draw boundaries.

Dark-skinned Women Blues

Colourism is a thing..irregardless of whether you ‘don’t see colour’ or not and is a recurring topic in ‘We’re Going to Need More Wine’. Gabrielle speaks about being the darker of her sisters and trying to assimilate or get closer to white beauty standards by relaxing her hair, her experiences with guys and being told ‘You’re pretty for a dark-skinned woman’. She speaks about how as a teen she was ‘ineligible for the dating dramas of middle school’ as being a brown skinned girl didn’t appeal to the guys in her school and witnessing the privileges of her lighter-skinned mother and cousins and how these events fueled insecurities. A friend described to her how she was made to feel like she was encouraging division within the community and like she was imagining the effect of colourism whenever the issue was raised. On dating the friend advises her that certain men are not looking for relationships with dark-skinned women, and if being open about many black men look at the end game as lightening the gene pool. She questions the relationships these men have with the women in their families. A line that stood out in this chapter:

What if it’s not simply preference or acquiring a status symbol, but a learned tactic of survival.

-on questioning why some black men want to have lighter skinned children, possibly as a result of them seeing dark-skinned people treated as less than while light-skin is respected.

Gabrielle goes on to criticize herself for being attracted to and dating men lighter than her in her younger years, reveling in the validation she got from her father for dating these men. Until her sister’s friend called her out for being colour-struck and told her that it spoke volumes about her. She speaks about how that intervention encouraged self love. She concludes that the battle on colourism isn’t one for only women,

Men must mentor girls as they grow into women, guiding them to find their own validation so they don’t seek it elsewhere in negative ways. Tell your daughter or niece she is great and valued not in spite of who she is, but because she is exactly who she is.

Giving Up Control

Many people struggle with the fact that they are unable to control the thing happening around them. Life is full of curveballs, something Gabrielle discusses in the final chapter of her book. In this chapter she dives into her close friendship with the Martinez siblings, Ray and Sookie. Gabrielle talks about how Ray was teased, by not just the kids but also some parents, calling him names such as Sweet-Ray, Sugar Ray and Ray-Gay, however, she goes on to explain how she thought i was just that, teasing, and that Ray had had crushes on girls and have even briefly dated a girl; she even goes as far as wanting to fight a house full of kids to defend Ray’s honour.

Ignoring the signs Gabrielle reflects on pressuring Ray to pursue girls and taking him to live sex shows; and how Ray was pressured by friends to finally come clean to her and how much she had hurth them both by believing otherwise. In her reflection, she recognizes that she had been trying to control the way people judged her by the friend with whom she associated, by in-turn trying to control Ray.

She speaks about how easy it was to rekindle her friendship with Ray and Sookie whenever they bumped into each other. She goes on to expand on how Sookie had found a lump in her breast but had put off going to have it checked because, well, life. She’d always put it off because of work or whatever else came up. Sookie had told Gabrielle that she had been diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer. Her automatic response was the shift into control mode; she believed that money, advocating for breast cancer and prioritizing your health and getting in with the right organisations and doctors was the way to overcoming Sookie’s diagnosis. It only became clear to her three years later, after having explained to her that there is no cure for metastatic cancer, that she’d realised that she was again trying to control a situation that she was having trouble understanding and accepting. All she could do was spend time with her friend. Sadly, Sookie passed two years later, surrounded by people she loved at home. It is with her final message that Gabrielle concludes her book:

Sookie made me promise to tell you not to act out of fear. I can only add that you can be scared to death...and do the things you need to do anyway.

There are so many more moments that Gabrielle shares with us from her journey so far; her journey with her now husband Dwayne Wade and raising their beautiful children in a world where racism exists, her experiences in Hollywood and meeting Prince. We can only recommend that you join Gabrielle at the table. P.S. Don’t forget your wine. ;)