FOOLISH

A chronicle of a comedic writer’s journey to stardom.

Before going viral for lip-synching to speeches made by Donald Trump, Cooper jumped in and out of a career in tech with giants like Yahoo! and Google during Silicon Valley’s heyday, while periodically pursuing her dream of writing comedy. Her new memoir starts earlier, with essays about her childhood that cover the themes one might expect from the youngest child of Jamaican immigrants—e.g., road trips and parental expectations of achievement—as well as amusing episodes that might have foreshadowed her path (catching Bret Michaels’ guitar pick at a Poison concert). With comic finesse and a self-awareness that is neither aggrandizing nor deprecating, Cooper chronicles her experiences from high school drama classes, to office conference rooms, to TikTok glory and the doors it opened. While entertaining, playful, and frequently laugh-out-loud hysterical, the collection also earnestly pokes and prods at the more poignant truths beneath the easy veneer of Cooper’s rise, with pieces about her infertility and the decline of her marriage. Some essays feel disjointed and out of place—e.g., “Periwinkle Can Go Fuck Itself: My Life in Colors” and “Sibling Rivalry”—and the author’s repeated refrains about being high, while often amusing, occasionally undermine her insight. Nonetheless, Cooper demonstrates her prowess and staying power as a comedian, co-opting laughter to uncover something essential about the relationship immigrants have with race in America, the way love and desire create blind spots, and the self-consciousness and chaos that can so easily accompany fame, especially the rapid, viral kind. Despite Cooper’s insistence on her own laziness, her persistence in honing her skill is evident, and her appeal to audiences in a variety of formats will endure beyond her most recent explosion of recognition.

A delightful collection of essays that are both funny and revealing.