C-
Genre: Nonfiction
TW: addiction, suicide, homophobia, cancer
Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing felt right up my alley, despite not reading a ton of non-fiction. I watch a lot of anti-scam and anti-MLM content on YouTube and many podcasts I listen to fall into this category; it’s often the background noise while I’m gaming or reading. Hey, Hun tries to walk a fine line between gossipy memoir and cautionary tale and to me, failed on both counts. The damage done to both the author and those in her orbit is too sad and disappointing to feel good about, and the delivery is too matter-of-fact to glean any sense of remorse.
Author Emily Lynn Paulson opens with an introduction that explains how multilevel marketing works. If you don’t know, these companies sell products but the real money is to be made in recruiting others to your team, also known as your downline. Not only do you earn bonuses for recruitment, but you make commissions off sales in your downline. Statistically, though, most people lose money when joining an MLM. (I highly recommend this half hour special on MLMs from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver). Paulson additionally recognizes the classim, racism, and sexism ingrained into MLMs and recruitment.
The first problem I had with Hey, Hun is Paulson’s decision not to directly name the company in which she was involved. Her reasoning is that her experience is universal, no matter the MLM. The decision not to “name and shame” could also have legal implications, but to me, this felt like a step back from putting everything out there and working toward some kind of atonement. I will note that this information is easily Googleable. She also mentions that conversations and people aren’t necessarily word for word accounts, but more like amalgamations of several people and instances fused together. (Because, once again, these are universal to the MLM experience, according to Paulson.)
A former childhood acquaintance of Paulson’s reached out to her and tapped into Paulson’s loneliness as a stay at home mom. She signed on immediately, after meeting said acquaintance for dinner and doesn’t even make it back home before she recruits her first person. While Paulson had a meteoric rise in her MLM, it came at the expense of her marriage and personal relationships and led to an addiction to alcohol and pain medication.
It’s a sad spiral and I don’t want to knock the work Paulson has done to leave her MLM, get sober, and forge the path she wants outside of the home. It’s the damage left in the wake of joining MLMs (financial, emotional, psychological) and the lack of rectification of it on Paulson’s part that soured my experience. None of this felt good and while Paulson plainly states the harm that she’s caused, I didn’t feel it as a reader. Remorse, regret, and the weight of these actions never feel fully reckoned with and maybe they still aren’t for Paulson. Perhaps chalk that up to writing style. It could be that the audio version is the way to go if that’s what I needed. Regardless, it made me care less about Paulson’s story as a whole. What I was hoping for was a yes, a memoir, but one that fully reflects on the damage done by MLMs and the twisting of community and sisterhood for financial gain. Instead, it’s presented more like “these things happened” rather than “I did these things.”
If you’re looking for more to read on this topic, I’d recommend the tangentially related Cultish by Amanda Montell ( A | BN | K ). It’s not MLM specific, but taps into the language and brainwashing of these insulated communities.
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Thanks!
Smart review.
It’s too bad — the book has such a smart title and strong cover.
You didn’t even mention how she throws in the term “white supremacy” multiple times without properly explaining what she means.
Allison: You’ve caught my interest. What’s the context?
MLM is everywhere, and it’s too bad this isn’t the book it deserves. My former landlord’s wife (or co-owner with him, I don’t know) got involved with a MLM electricity company and asked me to use them as my electricity provider and sign up for their incentive program — she didn’t pressure, just asked once and accepted a no, but it was still all kinds of wrong.
Great review. I haven’t read the book, and after reading about the book, her story, and your review, I likely won’t. Because after learning about her story, to me, this book is just one more way she’s exploiting her story to make a buck.
This review is spot on. There were some weird editorial choices: not naming the MLM, the clunky insertion of references to white supremacy that are never fully explored (or reflected upon by the author in an in-depth way) and the discussion of Paulson’s sobriety journey, which seemed to gloss over arguably the most serious part: the point at which she decided to quote drinking (I found it incredibly jarring that she threw in a quick reference to a suicide attempt and then moved on). I think the latter was probably in part due to the fact Paulson has another book about her alcoholism, but without the context of the details of that story, it felt as if we leaped over crucial events. The parts where she repeatedly stated that she ‘doesn’t pick sides’ politically felt representative to me of a lack of real reflection. Paulson does not, apparently, see the problem with making money of ostensibly discussing MLM through a lens of feminism and white supremacy, yet in the same breath, makes sure to not alienate any republican readers who are voting for the policies she makes a performative point of denouncing (see: her discussion of BLM and bodily autonomy). All of it speaks to a central disconnect so familiar among white women (and I say this as a white woman) that this review sums so well: Paulson talks a lot about things that happened, instead of the things she did. This could’ve been an really interesting book, if Paulson were really prepared to be honest about her motivations (I didn’t but the ‘I stayed in out of guilt’ argument, largely because she also pointed out several times that leaving would not have financially impacted her down line, those she was supposedly so worried about) and was ready to really grapple with her complicity in not just a predatory organization but the white supremacy it upholds.