The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Rae, Issa. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. First 37 Ink/Atria Books. 37 Ink/Atria, 2015.

Issa Rae’s memoir is divided into thirteen chapters. The author includes an introduction in which she addresses fellow travelers in her quest to reclaim awkward blackness and take ownership of it as a viable identity. The book also includes five ABG Guides. These are humorous digressions that help to prescribe tips and tricks for social functioning as an Awkward Black Girl, an ABG.

The introduction of the book introduces the author as an ABG. From an early age she was seeking an alias to give her an aura of ease and social belonging.

“A/S/L” recounts the author’s early forays into internet chat rooms. She explores fabricated identity and experimentation with sexual personae.

“FAT” describes Issa’s love affair with food. She narrates her dieting journey and her arrival at a healthy weight and a relationship to food that works for her.

“ABG Guide: Public Grazing” is a comic tutorial on how to dine with dignity. It addressed at fellow food lovers, especially women who may perceive a certain stigma in dining alone.

“Leading Lady” is all about how the author came to become invested in film and television as social representation. The author discusses growing up with excellent television depicting Black life in American but feeling dissatisfied with contemporary representation of girls like her.

“ABG Guide: Connectin with Other Blacks” is an encyclopedic registry of different types of Black people in America. It is comic and parodic.

“When You Can’t Dance” describes the author’s adolescent social struggles in her new high school in Compton.

“Hair Hierarchy” is all about the author’s journey towards loving and appreciating the beauty of her natural hair. It recounts the aesthetic culture of her youth and her evolution into adulthood.

“ABG Guide: The Hair Advantage” explains how ABGs can embrace their natural hair and how they can receive all kinds of social feedback on it gracefully.

“Public Displays of Affection” explores two scenarios in which the author became ensnared in problematic PDA. One takes place on a youth retreat in Northern California. Another takes place in Dakar, Senegal.

Issa offers a long rumination on her relationship with her father in “African Dad.” The chapter is contemplative and reflective.

In “Dating Lessons and Summer Lust” the author narrates her active dating life one summer as an undergraduate at Stanford University.

“ABG Guide: Black Women and Asian Men” makes a terse claim for the value of matching Black women with Asian men.

“Musical Ambitions and Failures” offers a broad reflection on how the author’s musical tastes developed in adolescence and into adulthood.

“The Struggle” is an essayistic interlude on what Black identity means to the author.

“Halfrican” recounts the author’s ongoing relationship with her father and her own embrace of Senegalese culture. In “Fashion Deficit” Issa narrates chapters in her life when her fashion sense was particularly underdeveloped.

“New York, NY” is all about the author’s stint trying to make it in New York

“ABG Guide: When Co-workers Attack” is part advisory guide and part reflection on how the author came to quit her job in New York and return to Los Angeles. It centers around a particularly obnoxious co-worker.