How do you practice affirmation without cliché? How do you balance self-care with self-love? How do you navigate your hopes and goals through the oppressions of our patriarchal society, as well as the limitations of your own experiences?

Ask Shonda.

YEAR OF YES traces Shonda Rhimes’ ongoing transformation from a shy, somewhat closed-off genius writer to a genius writer who embraces herself, her choices and her experiences. Her journey began one Thanksgiving morning when her sister off-handedly commented that she never says yes to anything --- not to social events, publicity, family affairs, etc., being simply too busy as a single mother with three primetime television shows to accommodate anything else. Rhimes began to discover that her “no’s” were preventing her from fully experiencing her life --- trapping her in anxiety, negativity and loneliness. Her progress towards YES was a challenging one, but she adapted her yeses every step of the way, and steadily worked to navigate an honest and affirmative attitude towards life, love, work and self-celebration.

YEAR OF YES is a crucial book for many reasons. It resonates predominantly because it reads like a candid invitation into the heart of unquestionably one of the most important media figures today. Rhimes is a self-described “F.O.D.”: First, Only, Different, a trailblazing black female showrunner with three award-winning primetime shows. She continues to achieve meteoric success in a country in which black people are still getting extrajudicially executed for walking down the street. She is a champion, but more than that, she is a role model. One of the strongest parts of YEAR OF YES is her articulate emphasis that she did none of this alone. She earnestly champions her nanny, without whom she could not raise three daughters alongside three shows, and celebrates her support system of friends and family.

"YEAR OF YES...resonates predominantly because it reads like a candid invitation into the heart of unquestionably one of the most important media figures today... [It] reads like the best friend you haven’t met yet, sharing a very personal but exciting secret. Rhimes’ voice is kind, funny, intimate and natural."

Rhimes also includes the speech she gave for Hollywood Reporter’s“Women in Entertainment.” Here, she challenges the notion that she’s broken any glass ceiling by pointing out how many women --- those unrecognized by anyone as well as those recognized by history --- have come before her, paving her way. She understands the fallacy of “trickle-down feminism” --- she knows that being F.O.D. is made possible by the struggles of those who work to create a world in which a black woman can be heard, and she uses that voice to elevate others. She knows that her success doesn’t guarantee the successes of other black people who love to tell stories and don’t want to get married any more than Rhimes herself. She knows she wasn’t lucky: she’s talented, advantaged and determined. She knows her success isn’t going to magically make racist and sexist structures dissolve. And so she writes.

Rhimes beautifully challenges the notion that her media “diversifies” television. “As if there is something unusual about telling stories involving women and people of color and LGBTQ characters on TV,” she writes. “I have a different word. NORMALIZING. I’m normalizing TV. I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people equal WAY more than 50 percent of the population. Which means it ain’t out of the ordinary. I am making the world of television look NORMAL. …You should be able to turn on the TV and see your tribe…see your people, someone like you out there, existing…You are not alone.” Rhimes understands why we need representation. She understands that by misrepresenting demographics in media, we misrepresent humanity. She understands that nonwhite and/or nonstraight people still face oppression. She understands that that oppression comes from misunderstanding on the part of the ruling class --- and so Rhimes, when she has every class’s eyes on her Thursday nights, uses that opportunity to tell the truth.

This is pretty funny, because her book feels so candid partly because she admits that she lies for a living and likely edits the personal details of the book. But through her storytelling, through “normalizing” television, she conveys some of the most crucial truths. Queer people are human. Nonwhite people are human. Nonwhite queer people exist and can lead lives that revolve around their race and sexuality or lives that largely do not. Rhimes understands that the marginalized are not tokens. She writes all her characters in a full and complex way, and in so doing, she validates these identities and experiences. She did not get to where she is alone, and works to pave the way for those who follow in the example of her beautiful footsteps. She works to make it easier. She is succeeding.

YES to Rhimes doesn’t mean empty conciliation. It means celebrating what it means to be you and being honest to that person. Yes to life, love, family and self-celebration sometimes means saying no to traditional scripts like marriage and yes to your own goals. Yes sometimes means working hard at being healthy and happy with your body --- and saying no to the external forces that try to define what that means for you. Yes sometimes means saying no to people in your life who demand more than you can or want to give. Yes means being true to yourself. This moral alone can seem sanguine or reductive, but YEAR OF YES writes accessibly, and Rhimes’ voice encourages and empowers. And of course, it comes with a ready-made success label --- Rhimes herself practices this, and obviously it seems to be working!

YEAR OF YES reads like the best friend you haven’t met yet, sharing a very personal but exciting secret. Rhimes’ voice is kind, funny, intimate and natural. She speaks dramatized fiction to our whole nation and beyond every Thursday night, yet here, in this book, she chooses to speak some of her most important truths. She is a single black mother who founded ShondaLand, a universe built from and about her stories. She celebrates the diversity of motherhood, womanhood and personhood. She destroys the notion of the mother martyr, calling for the destigmatization and celebration of the feminine and female roles. She celebrates the young black girls who dream and write and create. Rhimes knows that there aren’t many stories out there for those young black girls, and she knows that the rest of the world suffers by misjudging and misrepresenting them. So she creates them and works to build a world in which this achievement will no longer be considered groundbreaking.

Will she succeed? We can only hope. Does her book encourage readers to embrace and celebrate themselves, and to be more understanding of those whose stories are less often told?

Yes.