Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me (PB) (2025)

"[E]nlisting movies and TV to explain the world is Harris's expertise, arriving at 'inadvertent self-formation by way of popular culture.' For readers already inclined to read culture to understand themselves, WANNABE is a compelling affirmation that they're looking in the right place." -- New York Times Book Review

"Aisha Harris is one of our smartest, most entertaining modern cultural critics. The nine pieces offer insight on Stevie Wonder, the Spice Girls, Pen15, and New Girl--among many other pop artifacts, of course--which might as well be parlance for, 'Read me immediately.'" -- ELLE, A Most Anticipated Book of 2023

"Like many of us, Aisha's brain has been molded, sculpted, broken, busted, and reconfigured by pop culture. But what distinguishes her, and what makes Wannabe such a joy to read, is that she exists in the intersection of critic's critic and Black girl's Black girl--deconstructing what, how, and why we consume in concert with her progressive recognition that she never quite needed to find herself because she was always there. It's like if Nola Darling, Rob Gordon, and Nora Ephron had an atheist baby." -- DAMON YOUNG, award-winning author of What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays