I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying
A Memoir
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Elle's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 | The Boston Globe's Best Books of 2024 | San Francisco Chronicle's Best New Books of Fall 2024
From standup comedian Youngmi Mayer, an unforgettable memoir written with "raw, enviable freedom that simply floors you," interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality in America, navigating a tumultuous childhood in Korea and Saipan, and coming to terms with her parents' shortcomings (Michelle Zauner).
"Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole." It was a constant truism Youngmi Mayer's mother would say threateningly after she would make her daughter laugh while crying. Her mother used it to cheer her up in moments when she could tell Youngmi was overtaken with grief. The humorous saying would never fail to lighten the mood, causing both daughter and mother to laugh and cry at the same time. Her mother had learned this trick from her mother, and her mother had learned this from her mother before her: it had also helped an endless string of her family laugh through suffering.
In I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own parents: a mother who married her husband because he looked like white Jesus (and the singer of The Bee Gees). And with humor and irreverence and full-throated openness, she jokes even while sharing the story of what her family went through during the last century of colonialism and war in Korea, while reflecting how years later, their wounds affect her in New York City as a single mom, all the while interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality.
Youngmi jokes through these stories in hopes of passing onto the reader what her family passed down to her: The gift of laughing while crying. The gift of a hairy butthole. Because throughout it all, the one thing she learned was one cannot exist without the other. And like a yin and yang, this duality is reflected in this whip-smart, heart-wrenching, and disarmingly funny memoir told by a bright new voice with so much heart and wisdom.
About this Author
Youngmi Mayer is a standup comedian and host of the podcasts Feeling Asian and Hairy Butthole. She has been on The Today Show, ABC News, Rolling Stone, CNN, Vice Munchies, Eater's Guide To The World and The Mind Of A Chef. Her work has been featured in Netflix Is A Joke, Comedy Central and BBC. She has written for Lucky Peach, Cherry Bombe, InStyle and Women's Health Magazine. She is one of the rare comedians working today who has obtained success both on online platforms and in the mainstream. She lives in New York City with her son, Mino Bowien.
Reviews
"Youngmi Mayer has the incomparable ability to find something funny in the most life shattering material. She writes with a raw, enviable freedom that simply floors you."--Michelle Zauner, New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart
"Youngmi Mayer's wit shines as she takes you across a spectrum of emotions, setting you up for heartbreak only to drop-kick you with a laugh. Through an intimate and relatable portrayal of her family's history, I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying explores all the parts that make us who we are. She's shown me that there's a little entitled white guy inside each of us."
--Sohla El-Waylly, New York Times bestselling author of Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook
"You should probably get this book just so I don't have to call you up or show up to your house and read to you from it."--Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"In her debut memoir, Youngmi Mayer is witty, irreverent, and, at times, astonishingly tender, reminding us all that often, the only rational rebuttal to tragedy, trauma, and heartbreak is laughter."--Joanne Molinaro, New York Times bestselling author of The Korean Vegan: Reflections and Recipes from Omma's Kitchen
"Mayer has written an aptly named, balls-to-the-wall memoir...she's outrageously funny...And she's not afraid of shooting her mouth off, using a few choice (read: profane) words to make a point...the book's most rewarding quality: its brutal honesty."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Across all of her work, Mayer's superpower is her ability to tap into the emotional core of whatever she has her sights on -- racism, the death of her cat, the contents of her son's backpack, etc. -- and articulate it in such a way that reveals how closely humor lives on the other side.... The most complete expression of Mayer's sensibilities to date arrives in the form of [I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying]."
--Vulture
"Renegade comedian Youngmi Mayer's frank new memoir is a blitzkrieg to the genre...Raunchy, tender, hilarious."--The Week Magazine
"Comedian Mayer blends wit and wisdom in this charming account of growing up biracial in Korea and Saipan, raising a child alone in New York City, and coming to terms with the damages of generational trauma...This heralds the arrival of a promising new voice."--Publishers Weekly
"Mayer pulls no punches about her kaleidoscopic and wide-ranging lived experiences as a Korean American...[I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying] adds a valuable and fresh perspective to the subgenre of coming-of-age memoirs and memoirs about Asian American experiences."
--Library Journal
"Youngmi Mayer's raw, revealing memoir is ready to shock and delight."--Shelf Awareness (starred)
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