It’s a risky move, but Gabrielle Union has taken the liberty of ordering for the both of us. She doesn’t know Chicago very well — she’s only here for brief stretches when she and her husband, NBA player Dwyane Wade, aren’t home in Miami — but she does know her way around this Old Town sports bar’s fattiest menu options. She rattles off about 6,000 calories worth of items she likes: ham and cheese croissant pretzels, lobster deviled eggs, pork spare ribs, and two spicy margaritas.
She’s raunchy, wise, unpretentious, thoughtful, and it’s all those facets of “likable” that have gotten Union from point A to point B to the inevitable point Z when you’ve got fire tweets and plenty of charm: a book deal — one so big even Union was surprised at the amount, which she won’t disclose.
And that’s where she chooses to start her stories, with her life growing up as one of few black families in very white Pleasanton, California. The insecurity of being a minority in majority-white spaces is one of the through-lines among the 20 tales she’s chosen to tell: Her account of being a black woman in Hollywood for example, includes a frankly traumatic-sounding experience getting her hair done on set.
“I’m in the rooms with the women and there is such a shroud of secrecy and shame,” she says of why she decided to write about fertility struggles so extensively. “I mean, there’s back entrances, there are people who will come get you from your car with an umbrella. The idea of being found out, like going to a fertility doctor? Oh my god, the jig is up. People are thinking, she married this young guy and her shit doesn’t work. Awww. Awww, and he had that baby with somebody else. Awww.