Aminatou Sow

I very much enjoyed this book. I listened to the audio version that Aminatou and Ann narrated and it was similar to listening to their podcasts but without their lovely back and forth which I missed. I love that they are so invested in their friendship. Friendships have always baffled me. I've never been comfortable in social situations and I have long attracted people that are looking for an emotional crutch or who want me to make them something...but are unwilling to give anything back to show more the relationship. As a mid-age adult, I'm learning how to cultivate friendships that are actually two way so listening to this book was a great lesson for me. show less

I love books about platonic friendship. A lot. I think we don't talk about the value of friendship enough, and I read this while staying in a house with my college best friends, having gathered at no amount of financial, emotional and time investment to see our core friend group. So, this book should have been up my alley. But while Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman attempt to review the academic literature on friendship, this is a very superficial portion of the book. Most of the book is show more specifically about Aminatou and Ann's friendship in particular. I like that they wrote about being friends through difficult times and how to handle to dissolution of friendship, as well as focusing on how to maintain friendships via facing conflict and finding ritual, all of which are part of my core friendship values. But I just ...didn't like them. I have the sense that I'd like Sow or Friedman individually (and I have when I've heard them on podcasts) but their friendship based on alcohol and girly TV and fashion and being "low drama mamas" (I've found people who declare themselves low drama are (a) almost always not and (b) toxically conflict-averse) was something that made me want to run for the hills. show less

I really love the concept of this book as friendships aren’t discussed enough. I actually wanted to see more of the research and info rather than the authors’ stories; it was good to hear how they became friends, but there was too much backstory on them before they met. The last two chapters were the best and ones I’ll be returning to; they gave me a lot to think about in my own lost friendships.

Big Friendship is written for people who have already heard of Aminatou and Ann through their podcast Call Your Girlfriend. It's for readers who already love these two people and their friendship and who want to hear more about them.

Unfortunately, I am not in this demographic, so the book wasn't my cup of tea. But also, I'm not totally sure how much true fans will get out of it, either.

Big Friendship as it turns out is a joint memoir with stories very loosely organized by chapter themes show more like "the internet" and "compromise" (I really got the impression that these two actually wanted to write a bunch of different books chronicling their opinions on the internet or women in business, etc but instead forced themselves to shove ideas under these chapter titles). We get a lot of biographical information on Ann and Aminatou's personal/professional lives, but, because they clearly wanted to respect everyone else's privacy, we don't get details. A lot of the stories felt bland and impersonal - "I was in a bad relationship," is much less fun to read than "I was dating this guy named Kevin who consistently prioritized his dog and his workout schedule over me." I appreciate the desire to let all your friends and enemies maintain their anonymity, but couldn't they have simply changed some names and details and thus kept the color in?

They incessantly remind you that all this backstory is leading up to their big friendship blowout. They promise juicy details and drama, then when you actually get to the falling out (in the second to last chapter), there just isn't one. Literally. They just. Grew apart. And then they went to platonic couple's therapy and everything was okay again (except maybe it wasn't, because they get particularly vague about what has happened in their friendship since then, leading me to suspect that they are, in fact, maybe not as close of friends anymore). Y'all...

The most compelling parts ended up being the research-backed advice bits. These nibblets were sparse and sprinkled completely at random - some chapters had barely none, then the last chapter was almost 100% interesting data and suggestions. Maybe just read that last bit? show less