On Victimhood

And Andrew Boryga's debut, "Victim"

Have you read

Andrew Boryga

’s banger debut Victim yet? Big fan here. I’ve been gulping down satire recently, and this novel nailed re: identity politics, virtue-signaling, and our collective fetishization with “victimhood.” Given the legit shitiness of so many people’s lot in life, it’s a risky topic to tackle. But Boryga pulls it off with nuance. And the humor bites.

The novel centers around Javi, an aspiring Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx. Javi’s guidance counselor encourages him to write a college application essay about his father’s murder when he was a child. Mine his upbringing for pity points, even though Javi doesn’t feel like he’s ever had it all that rough. After he’s is accepted to a prestigious university, Javi quickly learns that grossly exaggerating his “victimhood” will skyrocket his social clout, love life, and career as a writer. Things unravel from there in spectacularly cringey ways.

What did you think? I found the relationship between Javi and his girlfriend, Anais, so compelling. Anais is a Latina student (and ex-cheerleader) from a relatively privileged background whose revolutionary-level wokeness gets porous once she and Javi move back into his Bronx neighborhood after graduation. Anais wants to live in a luxury Brooklyn condo next to fancy coffee shops with poetry readings instead. Their fights expose so much about young love once it’s tested outside the bubble of college idealism. It also highlights the potency of class (just as much as race, the book seems to argue), in creating differences in our values.

I struggle with mining “victimhood” in my own writing, particularly as it relates to my nonfiction around mental health. I wrote an entire memoir about my time working in Silicon Valley with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and even got an agent for the project. Things he said as I worked through our first round of edits: How can we raise the stakes? How can you make the main character less toxic and more “likable”? (This was a major lol because the main character was, of course, me). What I heard: How can we make you more of a victim?

I did the revisions as best I could, but they made me feel icky. Because in reality, the most dramatic thing that happened to me is that I had to take a leave of absence from work, eventually quit my full-time career in tech, and re-evaluate my relationship to “success.” I had health insurance, access to meds, and an awesome support system. I was pretty much always going to be “fine.”

After I sent in the revised manuscript, the agent ghosted me for a year. This was 2020, and the pandemic may have had something to do with it, but still, I came away thinking that my story wasn’t “big” enough to be worthy of anyone’s time. There wasn’t enough big-time hardship to make the story compelling. Maybe that’s true, or maybe the writing was just bad. Maybe both. Either way, after an excruciating duration of crickets, I sent an email to the agent, officially parting ways. He never responded.

I blew up the entire project and turned it into a novel. The story is a whole lot juicer. The basic premise is the same (I kept the title: “A Leave of Absence,” although now I think I might want to title it "Crying in Bathrooms,” ha), but the backstory and everything that happens to the main character after her diagnosis is completely wild and made up. I’m querying that novel to new agents now. We will see. I tried to portray “victimhood” with nuance, but still, it was tricky.

All of this is to say that I applaud what Boryga has done with Victim. There’s a lot I learned from him in reading this book and I can’t wait to see what he writes next.

I’ve been ending these newsletters with more frivolous shit so here we go. What else can I say? Oh, I just threw out my back by literally…coughing? My husband was like, “yep, you’re getting old.” Thanks thanks. What did I buy recently that made me feel better? Trader Joes Everything But the Bagel Yogurt Dip. These amazingly rad new shoes for my three year old (which I also very much want). A plane ticket to Aspen(!) I was accepted to Aspen Summer Words in June and am so honored. I’m in Angie Kim’s workshop. I just started her novel Happiness Falls, and WOW what a page turner. In other page-turner news, you’ve gotta read I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown. (I just finished it). My new project also involves identical twins and this book sets the bar for twists.

Okay bye friends!