A few pages in, I knew this would be essential AAPI reading, on par with “Minor Feelings.” Mayer’s writing is searing, tragic and hilarious, if a little pedantic at times. I was not familiar with Youngmi Mayer’s comedy before reading this; now, count me as a huge fan. Thanks to the publisher and NetG for the arc.

Really enjoyed the blend of humor & vulnerability Youngmi Mayer brought to this book! A great memoir!

Youngmi Mayer has certainly lived an interesting life and it is ripe for a memoir. She grew up biracial (half Korean and half white) in Saipan, had a somewhat abusive childhood and she has experienced an interesting and diverse adulthood which includes helping to start a successful (but eventually failed) restaurant chain, single parenthood and becoming a standup comedian.

I thought the memoir sounded interesting (and I hoped funny since she is a comedian, and I love a funny memoir) even though I didn’t know Mayer. Maybe if I knew her beforehand I wouldn’t have listened/read it because her tone just didn’t work for me. While her story is certainly one that should be told, and I did think her childhood was fascinating and enjoyed learning about how Mission Chinese came to be, I just found the tone hard to listen to/read. I’ve had this issue before with certain books (some novels, some memoirs) - I don’t like feeling like I’m being yelled at while reading. I’m sure her voice and tone work for many, just not for me. It’s a great memoir for her story, and I think many readers will enjoy.

3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown for the ARC to review

This memoir is an absolute delight! The author, a biracial Korean woman, invites readers into her world with wit, humor, and a refreshing honesty that's both touching and laugh-out-loud funny. From the very first page, her unique voice pulls you in, making you feel like you're sitting down with a close friend who just happens to have the most entertaining stories to share.

The author effortlessly navigates the complexities of her identity, blending hilarious anecdotes about growing up in two different cultures with deeper reflections on what it means to be both Korean and American. The way she uses humor to tackle serious issues—like identity, racism, and belonging—is truly impressive. It’s the kind of writing that makes you laugh one moment and reflect the next, often in the same breath.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!
DNF @ 52%

I had to DNF because of graphic depictions of domestic and physical abuse, eating disorders, and other heavy topics I don’t have the capacity to read about at this present time. That being said, this memoir is poignant, reflective, and darkly hilarious. I would like to return to this once I’m able to do so because the writing is whip smart and compulsively readable!

For folks who are fans of the author’s work, you’ll probably love this, but please check the content warnings if you’re sensitive to the topics listed above.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying takes a humor-laced look at author Youngmi Mayer's life.

One of the things I've always loved about Youngmi as a content creator is that she never pulls her punches, but not necessarily in the way most creators do. She manages to find the specific humor in every circumstance, to deliver lines that cut deep because they make you laugh, and make you laugh because they cut deep. I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying is not only no exception to this skill, but may in my opinion be the perfect representation of it. I was laughing. I was touched. I was in awe. I felt the broad spectrum of human emotion reading this book, and I'd read it again in a heartbeat. Plus, Mayer's writing is just spectacular. Sometimes comedians' writing doesn't translate well into memoir, but Mayer really nails it from every angle here. A truly refreshing and memorable experience.

Comedian Youngmi Mayer writes with blunt honesty, unforgiving wit, and a complete lack of kiss-assery. I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying is her memoir about life as a mixed-race Korean American, her childhood in Korea and Saipan before moving to the United States to escape her abusive boyfriend and her parents, surviving her twenties, getting rich, then losing it, relationships, and motherhood. She expertly weaves memories, generational trauma, Korean history, and folklore together. Mayer is not here to hold the reader’s hand; she has a story to tell and astute observations to make. She makes it known that she isn’t afraid of failure and isn’t writing to please anyone, which is a significant reason why her memoir is so fantastic.

I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying addresses racism, sexism, the effects of colonialism, abuse, drug use, sex work, eating disorders, poverty/wealth, generational trauma, and more. Check the trigger warnings. It isn’t for the faint of heart or anyone who needs to clutch their pearls at the use of curse words.

“Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole.” This is the message she learned from her mother. It is a way to bring levity to dark times, a survival tactic in an unjust world. This memoir is raw, alive, and unapologetic. I couldn’t recommend it more but don’t say you weren’t warned when you end up with a hairy butthole.

Thank you to Little, Brown & Company, and NetGalley for an ARC copy. All opinions are my own.

A brutally honest look at a difficult childhood with family who could rip your heart out at any moment. Relatable to those that had a parent or parents who ended up being their first bully and how they overcame the times they felt unworthy despite their success. I was not aware of the author before reading "I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying," but I will definitely be looking into her comedy.

**Thank you Net Galley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.**

What a phenomenal memoir! I wasn't aware of Youngmi Mayer previously, but the description sounded intriguing. This was such a funny and insightful memoir. She has such a unique experience living in Korea, Saipan, and America as the daughter of a Korean mother and American father. Since she did not live in America when she was very young, she is able to see the culture more clearly and skewer it. Mayer's descriptions of her childhood and anecdotes of her family were so sharp, wry, and thought-provoking. Gives so much insight to how humor can help people through traumatic, uncertain times. I listened to the audiobook, which the author masterfully narrates. Some parts had me in tears from laughing so hard. I absolutely love memoirs like this, where they're incredibly entertaining and well written, but also teach you so much about the human condition and the experiences of others.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ebook and audiobook ARC. All thoughts are my own.

In her deceptively short memoir, Youngmi Mayer takes readers on a journey through her incredible (and at times unbelievable) life with a straightforward, sharp voice that is uniquely her own. The daughter of a Korean immigrant mother and a Caucasian father who unexpectedly met in Alaska, Mayer begins not with her own birth but the story of her grandparents, laying the context of a complicated heritage and backstory. The memoir is both a recounting of her own life but also serves as a history lesson, noting how the impact of war and colonialism as well as deeply rooted cultural norms and expectations shaped her ancestors' lives.

Mayer herself has lived an extensive life in her relatively short years; born in Alaska, she grew up with a distant father who was frequently gone for his work as a pilot and a mother who took on low wage jobs to help make ends meet, with an abusive older half-sister from her father's earlier marriage. Over the course of her childhood, her family moved to Saipan and South Korea - until Mayer moved herself to San Francisco and attempted to build a life for herself, despite having no clear path forward. She details the deplorable living conditions she lived in as she took on minimum wage jobs, to her eventual meeting and marriage with Danny Bowien, the now-celebrity chef who took the culinary world by storm with Mission Chinese. She doesn't shy away from sharing the ways this unplanned fame and wealth changed their lives - and was a driver into their eventual divorce, even with their son Mino in their lives. Even though this would have broken many others, Mayer used the divorce as a chance to pivot her life entirely, even at the risk of failure, and make an identity for herself, on her own terms.

Despite the seemingly light-hearted title and some of the humorous sections of this memoir, this was very much a bittersweet read. They say comedy is tragedy plus time, and in no other work is this statement truer; Mayer has taken some incredibly painful and vulnerable moments in her life, but has found glimmers of humor and laughter to share. She's covered a number of difficult themes and topics in these pages as well, including racial identity and belonging; the inadequacy of being too much or not enough, especially as a woman; white supremacy and the history of colonialism, war, and abuse; racial discrimination/fetishization; classism and wealth; weaponizing of sex and sexuality; generational trauma; marriage and motherhood; and mental illness, especially in Asian American populations.

I'm so grateful I had a chance to read "I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying" before its publication, and would recommend to readers when it's published on November 12th!

Youngmi Mayer's writing style matches the cadence of her Tiktoks, which is something that I found to be delightful - I love when people write the way they speak. Her memoir is funny, poignant, and doesn't hold back on the punches. She's honest about her life experiences and draws on her family histories and Korean culture to illustrate her identity, her career, and her life as we know her now.

very interesting memoir about a very interesting person, standup comedian Youngmi Mayer, which is told with humor but also shows her struggles. Tysm for the arc. 4 stars.

Could not put it down. Youngmi has a way of succinctly and logically describing the why behind peoples’ abhorrent behavior. She has been through some horrible life experiences herself, but she is not a victim. Rooting for her in whatever she does next.

comedy, Korean-Americans, memoir, Asian-cultures, cultural-exploration, cultural-heritage, mixed-heritage*****

Witness for the prosecution of those who are intolerant of the very mixed heritage children they are responsible for from a vetted Korean perspective in the guise of humor.
I requested and received a temporary digital galley edition/uncorrected advance content from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley. Thank you! Avail Nov 12, 2024

really interesting memoir and story about a woman raised in Korea and now living in America as an adult. very unique, i liked this book (feels weird to say i loved it because it's full of a lot of suffering and shame but yes i loved it too).

Thanks to NetGalley & Little, Brown, and Company for the ARC!

Youngmi Mayer’s "I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying" is an absolute tour de force—a brilliant memoir from an author who couldn’t care less about whether or not you think she’s smart.

That might sound like an odd thing to lead with, but Mayer herself does so. She opens the book by opining that there have been countless, pointless books from countless, pointless white men, so she shouldn’t need a reason for a memoir. She almost invites readers to dismiss her confidence as unearned, but that’s the point—she doesn’t need to earn confidence.

It’s her right.

This mindset allows her to write one of the most incisive and thoughtful memoirs in recent memory because she doesn’t need it to adhere to any genre tropes. There’s no impulse to retrofit history to her current image or depict herself as some sort of demigod moving through crazy, memorable events. She has a clear awareness of her unique positionality as an Asian-American who didn’t grow up in the United States, but that distinctive doesn’t lend itself to self-promotion. Instead, it creates an opportunity to throw Korean and American culture into stark juxtaposition, but never in that sickly sweet way where a narrator seemingly exists to share lessons with a white audience. Mayer has no interest in offering herself to white readers for the feelgood catharsis of feeling bad. In fact, this is a memoir that is selective about when it reveals its author because it has bigger things on its mind.

It’s such a refreshing subversion of the genre. I tire of books that condemn white patriarchal publishing norms while seeming desperate to conform to them—stories that follow the same tired arc. Mayer—again—just does not care about the book’s palatability, and there’s something energizing and freeing every time an anecdote is included even when it “doesn’t make sense.” It doesn’t need to.

Truth doesn’t always make sense.

This is a structural and tonal masterpiece as well. As the focus often shifts away from the author, the book spirals inward, moving recursively through memories, Korean history, and myth, all while never spinning its wheels. Mayer has so much control over every rhetorical move, but she refuses to entertain a writerly ego; she’s too busy with more important matters. She writes with a crassness that might grate against some people, but it serves a purpose—to remind readers that the book isn’t about them or their tastes. The author has lived a lot of life, but she’s intentional about the information she shares and withholds. There are moments of pain where lesser writers would dramatically self-flagellate, but Mayer pulls back—they belong to her, not the reader.

I think the book’s biggest success, however, is Mayer’s mesmerizing ability to pivot from flippancy to razor sharp analysis within the space of a few words. As a few notable examples, she contrasts the harsh reality of her family selling Kool-Aid to survive with how wealthy children cosplay poverty through lemonade stands. She writes about how the thrill of stand-up is that it’s pathetic, even when you’re good at it. She explores how poverty is moralized as a mark of original sin. It’s all just so smart at every turn, but it’s written with the understanding that even such reflection can easily become its own kind of self-indulgence.

I could go on, but I think it’s best to let the book speak for herself. I really hope "I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying" gets the attention it deserves, and I hope it means that we’ll get to see more of Youngmi Mayer’s exciting work as an author.

A phenomenally written memoir that will make you laugh out loud and contemplate life choices. Hilariously narrated and soulfully written for any audience willing to learn about being Korean American. If we weren’t in an Orwellian predicted society where bad language could prevent millions from enjoying this necessary read, I’m dying to have permission to use this in my classroom!

This was a devastating and darkly hilarious memoir. Mayer has a gift for painting a vivid picture with her words. If anything, I wanted this book to be longer, to go more in depth in certain subjects and themes.

Arriving at an author through their dark, chaotic, amazing instagram presence is not the usual course of events for me, but I was extremely excited to come to know Youngmi Mayer through a different medium. Mayer alludes to her complex relationship with her parents with whom she shares a deep love but also deep trauma. Her unsparing discussion of topics like parental abuse in many forms as well as other struggles in her adult life lead to deep revelations about the way that she has claimed her selfhood. The book opens with the origins of Mayer's mother's family and the ways that colonialism, postwar poverty and Korean culture in general permeate every ounce of her existence. Parts of her family story were told so compellingly, I remember feeling like I wanted them to be a novel in and of themselves. Mayer's unpretentious and honest commentary on her family story really pulls the reader in and out of these powerful moments in a way that is very readable. As Mayer chronicles the difficult relationship she had with her parents and how shame and poverty impacted her upbringing, she is able to examine it with a lens of wider understanding. Throughout the book she also makes really insightful observations about the way race, class and identity work. Mayer touches on tenants of buddhism and Korean culture sometimes delving into deeply philosophical territory when discussing how individuals relate to themselves, their families and their societies, but also shares incredibly specific stories that are at turns humorous, then painful, but almost always both. I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying is funny, smart, touching, sad, deeply personal but also in many ways, universal. It embodies the notion of Laughing and Crying as a way to understand the simultaneous joy and pain we experience in our lives. So metal.

In this memoir, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own a mother who married a man simply because he looked like white Jesus. She also discusses her family’s experience through the last century of colonialism and war in Korea, while reflecting how years later, their wounds affect her adult life in New York City.

One of the biggest overarching themes I picked up from the book was this theme of duality: being praised for losing weight by friends and family, but being criticized for having an ego around “being skinny” to be a model; not being fully seen as both Korean and White, but also being seen as only Korean or only White depending on her audience; wanting to blend in among her peers while also being forced to stand out whenever her White father was around. Mayer beautifully blends Korean history with her own experience to give us some education and much needed context.

This was my first Advanced Reader Copy from @NetGally – thank you for the copy and thank you to Little, Brown & Company (@littlebrown).