(The Root) — Remember the first day of school? Sweating through your gym uniform waiting to get picked for kick ball? Walking into a bustling lunchroom with a tray full of Tater Tots and a heart filled with hope? Back then you knew the meaning of “awkward” before you even knew how to spell it. Too bad you didn’t also know Issa Rae. Rae — writer, director and star of the popular Web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl — has made it her hilarious mission to capture the angst of awkward girls (black or otherwise) everywhere — thoseawwwwkward moments that carried over from middle school to the mid-20s. ”I wanted to tell this story and I thought, ‘If I don’t start it myself, I’ll never get it done,’ ” Rae, 26, told The Root. “We’re not all ugly. We’re not all desperate. We’re just normal, awkward girls trying to find ourselves.” Rae plays J, the passive-aggressive diet-pill pusher who hates confrontation, despite thinking that all her co-workers “are pretty much the worst people in life.” She writes violent rap lyrics as a coping mechanism and is truly, madly, secretly in love with her co-worker Fred.
