I'M LAUGHING BECAUSE I'M CRYING

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), and wangtutta, the lowest of losers (herself, at school). It's easy to predict that the woman behind the Hairy Butthole podcast 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.