I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying: A Memoir

by Youngmi Mayer Narrated by Youngmi Mayer

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

With laughter comes reflecton, and with wit comes wisdom. This is a breathtaking memoir from a celebrated comedian on the dualities of life, love and happiness.

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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)

Kirkus Reviews

2024-09-14
A Korean American stand-up comic, influencer, and podcaster shares her story, and her rage.

Early in her provocative and passionate memoir, Mayer explains that she feels she can speak about being Asian with more confidence than other Asian American comics because she was raised in Asia. The daughter of a Korean mother and a white American father, she was born in the U.S., grew up in Seoul and Saipan, then at the age of 20 ran away from her family and her oppressive then-boyfriend, landing first in San Francisco. She met and married the celebrity chef Danny Bowien; moved to New York and had a child; became quite wealthy; lost it all. The best parts of Mayer’s memoir are where she explains aspects of Korean history and culture, including painful subjects like the country's relationship with Japan and international adoption. She presents terms and concepts in Hanjul characters as well as in transliteration and vibrantly weaves them into her story: for example,nunchi, which is the Korean way of knowing what you’re supposed to do in any situation (her white father did not), andwangtutta, the lowest of losers (herself, at school). It's easy to predict that the woman behind theHairy Buttholepodcast is not worried about offending people, and that is certainly true. Whether or not you fall into one of the groups Mayer scorns—white, American, male, rich, Japanese, liberal, and more—buckle your seat belts. She heaps on the generalizations, extreme irony, profanity, and fury. According to her bio, she is “one of the rare comedians working today who has obtained success both on online platforms and in the mainstream,” which suggests that lumping people into categories and making proclamations about them works better in stand-up than it does on the page.

If you can tolerate the use of words as a blunt instrument, this challenging book has a lot to say.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191370989
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	11/12/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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