External Behavior vs. Internal Truth
Such a Fun Age features many characters who behave in ways that contradict what they feel on the inside. This phenomenon features most prominently in Alix Chamberlain, a social media influencer, businesswoman, and champion of female empowerment (she heads a business called LetHer Speak) who employs college graduate Emira Tucker to babysit her two-year-old daughter Briar. The closest thing the novel has to an antagonist, Alix is the embodiment of performative white feminism…
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White Guilt, Ignorance, and Redemption
Throughout the novel, Emira encounters many characters who are determined to empower and improve her. And while many of these characters believe (or want to believe) that they are acting purely out of concern for Emira’s wellbeing, it’s more often the case that guilt and self-interest motivate their acts of goodwill. After a grocery store security guard racially profiles Emira while she is watching Briar and accuses her of kidnapping the toddler, Alix is overcome…
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The Quest for Meaning
Though in many ways Alix Chamberlain and Emira Tucker couldn't be more different, they both experience feelings of inadequacy and struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives. Alix, a social media influencer and businesswoman, feels irrelevant and purposeless when she becomes a mother and relocates from Manhattan to Philadelphia. She struggles to find motherhood as rewarding and meaningful as the business endeavors she enjoyed before undertaking the demands of domestic life. Meanwhile, Emira…
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Race, Class, and Privilege
In Such a Fun Age, characters who come from privileged backgrounds—such as Alix Chamberlain, her career-driven mom friends Jodi, Tamra, and Rachel, or Kelley Copeland—enjoy (and take for granted) opportunities that people who come from more modest origins or experience racial prejudice, such as Emira, rarely experience. Alix and her husband’s economic stability, for instance, allows Alix to hire Emira to look after her children while Alix attends…
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