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Product Identifiers

PublisherLittle Brown & Company

ISBN-100316569232

ISBN-139780316569231

eBay Product ID (ePID)8065339753

Product Key Features

Book TitleI'm Laughing Because I'm Crying : a Memoir

Number of Pages256 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicEssays, Form / Essays

Publication Year2024

GenreHumor, Literary Collections

AuthorYoungmi Mayer

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight15.9 Oz

Item Length9.6 in

Item Width6.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2024-931058

Dewey Edition23/eng/20241114

Reviews"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, "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 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, "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, "Renegade comedian Youngmi Mayer's frank new memoir is a blitzkrieg to the genre...Raunchy, tender, hilarious."-- The Week Magazine, "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, author of Crying in H Mart

Dewey Decimal792.7/6028092

SynopsisElle '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.

LC Classification NumberPN2287.M3A3 2024