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.

Author: Youngmi Mayer
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 11/12/2024
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.12w x 0.89d
ISBN: 9780316569231


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2024 pg. 12
Publishers Weekly 09/02/2024
Booklist 09/15/2024 pg. 8
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2024

About the 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.