Spare

Some readers here were so upset at my post about watching the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, and my expressed sympathy for the couple, my believing their experience as they related it, that they wrote me "how could you" and "I'm so disappointed in you" messages, and summarily took themselves away from being in community here. I accept that. Because by my lights, Harry and Meghan have every right to tell their story in their way, to speak the truth as they see it, regardless of what the British tabloid media might have to say about them, indeed especially because of what the British tabloids have already said about them, chewing them up mercilessly in sacrifice to more senior members of the royal family—Charles and Camilla, William and Kate, if you want to name names, and their faceless courtiers. Why should Harry and Meghan remain silent in the face of lies told about them? Of the ugliest, most violent racist and sexists tropes arrayed against them by bitter old men whom Camilla invites to her Queen Consort luncheons and teas? 

All that to say, I am now reading Prince Harry's new book Spare, which he wrote with a very fine collaborator, J.R. Moehringer, who also penned Andre Agassi's critically acclaimed memoir Open. (J.R. Moehringer's name isn't on the cover of either book, which is why I'm naming him here, because I know he talked deeply with Harry through weeks and months, perhaps even years of interviews, and labored with him over each carefully chosen word.) I'm still only a few chapters into Spare, but I find the book to be exceptionally well written and emotionally revealing. Harry is not trying to hide. He only wants to tell the tale from where he stood, with as much self examination as he can muster. And once again, I believe him. This is how it was, and is for him, as he and his biracial wife continue to be demonized, with the British press putting out a statement yesterday—gleaned as always from a mysterious palace "source"—that the royal family cannot reconcile with Harry as long as he remains "kidnapped by the cult of psychotherapy and Meghan." 

And there it is. Your Black wife or the family firm, buddy boy. I applaud Harry for choosing his wife and children. As far as I'm concerned, don't come for this broken kid with the royally ostracized mother hounded to her death by paparazzi, this young man who so painstakingly put himself back together, who ultimately found and chose love, despite its obvious inconveniences, and who is now daring to push back against lifelong conditioning that says he should bear his trauma in stoic silence, to tell his side of the story.