Confessions... A Book Review

I finished another book! So this is what had happened… I went to the library, checkout some books that had been on my reading list for a while and I just couldn’t get into them, so I took them back and picked up some random reads.

I didn’t really put too much thought into what I picked but I just grabbed whatever jumped out at me. I picked up Confessions of A Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans and Dear White People by Justin Simien. So, let’s begin with author Karrine Steffans…

Confessions of A Video Vixen was eye opening. And I want to preface my review, and clearly state that while I’d heard her name mentioned a few times several years ago, I never really took the time to research who she was or what she did. So the book begins with Steffan’s childhood, her upbringing with an abusive mother and an absent father. She clearly states in the book that she and her mother are estranged and made no mention or reconciliation. At the start, Steffan’s tone is more reflective and her accounts of her early childhood and teen years seem more consistent but as the book continues the tone changes and instead of being reflective, it is more random and I couldn’t tell if she was blankly giving accounts of her sexual escapades or was she leading her readers to an epiphany that changed her life. It ended up being story after story of all the hip-hop celebrities she’d been with. And while she named names, she didn’t really give all that much detail other than how good she was at sex and how much sex she was having.

All throughout the book she kept referring to her encounters longer than 2 weeks relationships but I have to say that as a woman of a certain age and experience, that she was simply, a prostitute. And I say that with an understanding that a prostitute is someone who performs sexual acts for payment (i.e.money and/or goods). While she did not acknowledge herself as a prostitute, anyone who has any familiarity with the basics of life can conclude that’s what she was; or if you prefer a more colloquial term - she was a HOE. But let’s not judge.

The book ends on a flat note, one last story of her fellating another celebrity and the book just ends. Did she come to find a better life for her and her son? I’ll never know because her other six books don’t seem to appeal to my interest, and to be totally honest, I wasn’t really into this book. It was a quick read and I’m happy it didn’t take up too much of my time. If this is something you’ve been meaning to read, I suggest you check it out from the library only because it wasn’t a compelling read that would really absorb the reader.