In My Remaining Years

by Jean Grae

Overview

A collection of darkly humorous, intensely personal essays by cult fave and multi-hyphenate artist Jean Grae

In My Remaining Years, by creative juggernaut Jean Grae, debunks the myth that coming-of-age narratives should be reserved for the kids, providing a much-needed rallying cry for those of us still trying to figure it out in our forties. These laugh-out-loud essays cover everything from aging gracefully (with and without botox), what happens when you look for community and almost start a cult, befriending childhood demons (Hi Mumm-ra!), gender fluidity in middle age, the cost of being too fabulous, and the various gymnastics we do to avoid becoming our parents, taking us from her childhood in 1980s New York City to present-day Baltimore. In these pages, Jean captures magic in a bottle, distilling the feeling of hanging out with your smartest, funniest, and most brutally honest best friend.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250857552
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Jean Grae is a multidisciplinary artist, humorist, and former rapper with over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. She’s collaborated with influential musicians including The Roots, Robert Glasper, and her prolific body of work is featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2019, the Public Theater commissioned her one-person show, Jeanius, which played for a limited time to sold-out audiences in New York City. She currently resides in Baltimore with her shared-custody cat, Littles. In My Remaining Years is her first book.
Jean Grae is a multidisciplinary artist, humorist, and former rapper with over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. She’s collaborated with influential musicians including The Roots, and Robert Glasper and her prolific body of work is featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2019, the Public Theater commissioned her one-person show, Jeanius, which played for a limited time to sold-out audiences in New York City. She currently resides in Baltimore with her shared-custody cat, Littles. In My Remaining Years is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

"A fierce, funny book that embraces life and all its imperfections with open arms."

—Kirkus

"Skillfully crafted...[Grae] captures the magic of sharing unforgettable and unpleasant moments with humor, while remaining refreshingly honest in her coming-of-age reflections."

—Booklist

“I have often considered how much better society would be if a small version of Jean Grae could live on every bookshelf. All of my experiments in this field have ended in international sanctions and house fires. But as usual, Jean had a better idea and wrote this book. The portable Jean now exists, and you must buy it!”

—John Hodgman, New York Times bestselling author of Vacationland

“As a proud day-one fan, I have always considered Jean to be one of my favorite creatives in hip-hop, turning out lyrics that sharpen your sense of the perfect imperfections of life. I couldn’t be happier to see her pivot into authorship. Personal history, the mystery of the self, the crazed whirl of the crazy modern world—all of it gets the Jean Grae treatment in these sledgehammer essays, which hold your hand while they invade your head.”

—Questlove

“This haphazard world is so very lucky Jean Grae wrote a book. A hall of myriad doorways into a mind and life like no other—so deep, so funny, so genius. If you’ve ever felt stuck articulating the unrelenting chaos of existing, Jean has got you covered and then some.”

—Aparna Nancherla, actress, comedian, and author of Unreliable Narrator

“I’m in awe of the many talents of Jean Grae. What a pleasure it is to discover that, as I’d expected, Jean is excellent at writing books, too.”

—Maris Kreizman, author of I Want To Burn This Place Down

“Jean Grae is relentless—in her pursuit of life, of honesty, of the beauty and brutality of being human, and all the strange and seductive things between. She will make you cry and marvel in the same breath, leave you gasping with laughter, and make you vow to never waste another moment of your own remaining years on some petty-ass bullshit.”

—Aisha Tyler, actress, director, and New York Times bestselling author of Self-Inflicted Wounds

“Jean Grae is always extremely compelling, whether on records, in text messages (brag!), and now on the page! In My Remaining Years has everything you could want from a memoir: A charming person writing with excellent style about their fascinating life. My only quibble is with the title, and that's only because I don't think Jean should ever die.”

—Josh Gondelman, comedian and author of Nice Try and Mixed Results

From the Publisher

2024-11-23
A humorist and former rapper contemplates her mortality in 18 essays.

“Getting…deathy with it” was South African native Grae’s way of coping with the impermanence she was forced to accept from an early age. After moving with her parents from Cape Town, she spent a “feral” New York City youth smoking too much “terrible weed” and witnessing violence, all of which led her to a preternatural acceptance of death. What she experienced also led to a determination that she would never allow herself to “die young from capitalism and misogyny.” With sardonic eyes that see the life ahead of her as “remaining years,” Grae muses on the severe burnout she endured from years of grueling work as an independent rap artist; the “assimilation trauma” that partly stemmed from being the South African girl her Black friends would claim wasn’t a “real African”; and the “patriarchy stress disorder” from living in a culture that revealed its misogyny through its disdain for her work as a rapper and its silences around female health issues like perimenopause. Her keen sense of humor and an abiding love of the fashionable and totally outrageous are the survival tools she celebrates throughout the book. Even as she imagines her own funeral in the closing essay, Grae demands that future attendees dance, cry, wear a “fabulous scent,” and look their most decadent in “caftans…trailing sheaths and billowing gowns.” By turns raw, mordant, and hilarious, this book will appeal not only to Grae’s fans but to readers with a taste for quirky and intelligent personal writing touched by the surreal.

A fierce, funny book that embraces life and all its imperfections with open arms.

Kirkus Reviews