We're Going to Need More Wine | Audiobook Reviews

We're Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True

Written and Narrated By: Gabrielle Union

Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins

Would I love to have a glass of wine with Union? Yesss! Would I listen to more of her essays? Nooooo!

Dude, the title We’re Going to Need More Wine soooo reminds me of sitting down with college friends and telling a woeful yet hiLARious tale: Sometimes the horribly traumatic, the terribly embarrassing winds up being just THAT thing that bonds people, that makes people burst into laughter all the while dabbing tears away from suddenly brimming eyes.

I was soooo looking forward to that.

Plus, my sister and her husband got me hooked on the danged “America’s Got Talent” which is the only TV I watch. And I thought the inclusion of Gabrielle Union gave the Judges Table so much MUCH needed class (Sorry Mel B. but God were you annoying!). I mean, it was Union’s turn to offer a critique to this guy who was telling a story with glow in the dark spray paint, and she happily spouts the enTIRe lineage of Human Prehistoric Eras with such delight. I mean, who can do THAT?!?

So I joyfully picked up this audiobook, thinking it’d make an AWEsome addition for Valentine’s Day being an homage to friendship and womanhood.

Uhm… maaaaaaybe?

First, given her age, just how much wisdom can one truly expect? Yeh yeh yeh: ‘Tis a compilation of Essays and NOT a Memoir. But it has her entire childhood and young womanhood and goes all the way up to the present day (Except for some HUUUUUUGE topics that were splashed in the tabloids so, dunno, maybe she’s still in the healing stage or just plain wants to be respectful of others’ privacy?). That said, uhm nope. She totally outs her dad as a philandering jerk and her mother as a passive lump of clay. Which I s’pose is okay, but she NEVER talks of her current husband, Dwyane Wade’s impregnating a woman whilst he and Union “were on a break” or how she’s gone on the record as being to blame for his cheating.

Huh? How is that empowering to women???

Okay, let’s go away from that and onto how she has no problem with sharing how she’s kinda a serial cheater herself. She dated and married (One) Loser(s), and she thought the only way out of such flawed relationships was to drive them to break up with HER for her infidelity. She was worried what her publicist would have to put out there if she were the one to kick the jerk to the curb.

Huh? How is that empowering to women??? (By the way, this’ll still be in Women’s History in the Empowerment section cuz I think I should warn women that this might noooooot be quite the thing).

On and on it goes: From dating only star-types (Boy is she proud she dated Jason Kidd, or what?), to marrying a dude in the NFL who wound up going nowhere, she’s there and using all her resilience and strength to prop up weak men. Financially carry a loser? Oh yesssss, better that than use her strong athletic leg to kick the SOB to the curb.

Huh????

Okay, so where the audiobook IS good is where she talks about how obnoxious and woeful (And well nigh imPOSSible) it is for Black people to assimilate into a culture that will not let them in, no matter how successful, how freaking SANE they might be. I danged near shed a couple of tears when she said she once donned mittens to stroll through her affluent largely white neighborhood cuz how scary can someone wearing MITTENS! be? Turns out, it’s just not enough.

And I did like how she is a Potty Mouth Extraordinaire (If you faint at strong language, avoid this like the plague), and how frank she was about a woman’s body, and what we go through. Also? Her narrating this herself was WONderful! She soooo made me feel like I was hanging out over a bottle of Boones Farm which I haven’t hit since I was but a darned stupid teenager.

Which, ultimately, is what I s’pose is the greatest take away I had from this. This is written by a woman who’s old enough to know better by this age, but who’s also not old enough to have any real wisdom to pass on. It’s like she’s stuck in her teens or something.

Still and all, glad I listened to it, glad I got it out of the way. Just so not what I was hoping for from the gorgeous woman.

Kudos to her for being a sexual assault SURVIVOR and for her tireless advocacy for other survivors; kudos to her for her activism.

Just kinda sorta no to making me feel her definition of “empowerment” means cheating and carrying the oh such dead weight that worthless men can be…