Renegade comedian Youngmi Mayer's frank new memoir is a blitzkrieg to the genre

Raunchy, tender, hilarious: The comedian Youngmi Mayer's debut book, "I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying," a memoir about her growing up biracial in Korea and Saipan (a United States island territory in the western Pacific), published on November 12. Her fans are beside themselves. If the world is just, that fanbase is about to balloon.

Mayer is both an analog and digital performer. She does standup comedy gigs and hosts comedy nights in her homebase of New York; her TikToks have spurred more than 31 million likes, and her profile has more than 500,000 followers. Mayer was born to a Korean mother and American father, and her "inimitable brand of messy biracial single-mom humor is something your most plugged-in Asian friends would describe, admiringly, as pure diasporic chaos," said Delia Cai in Elle.

A 'sly, snarky devil'

Astute, guffaw-inducing cultural observation is easier discussed than executed. Mockery only rings true if it inverts power dynamics from the inside. Mayer's humor interrogates whiteness as a construct, and she includes her own racial identity as half-white and half-Asian in that inquiry, playing, said Cai, "the part of a sly, snarky devil sitting on the shoulder of prim Asian-American consciousness." You know, she posits, how a certain breed of white person loves to show off what they know about, say, Japanese food? Watch how Mayer flips the tables, using pancakes as her point of entry.

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She gives equal razzing airtime to the Korean side of her lineage: how cruel and image-obsessed so many Koreans living in the motherland can be. As with all the best comedy, there are painful truths afoot and a spit-shined mirror reflecting Mayer's need for validation right back at her own splintered self.

"If you take the time to really know your shortcomings and really authentically face how shitty of a person you are, then you learn to forgive yourself and accept those parts of you," said Mayer to Vulture when interviewed as part of 2024's Comedians You Should Know. "From that place, the place of truly knowing and forgiving yourself, you are indestructible."

'The arrival of a promising new voice'

"I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying" aims to continue Mayer's movement toward self-deprecating self-acceptance. "The book is her life story, flushed out in painful detail, with frank diversions about abuse, drug use, suicidal ideation and the effects of generations-deep trauma paired with brutal observations about status and power," said Cai. "The joke, as it often is for diasporic types, is that 'I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying' is a book-length answer to the most cursed of questions: Where are you from? a.k.a. what’s your deal? a.k.a. how should you be categorized?"

These are gripping, uncomfortable topics — and precisely the landmines Mayer is comfortable skipping across. Mayer is "unsparing" but "refreshingly empathetic," said Publishers Weekly, in particular when she focuses on her parents. "I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying" proclaims the "arrival of a promising new voice."

That voice, having only been doing stand-up and online comedy for five or so years, has already been a mighty influence. Bao Nguyen and Chris Young, founders of the Literally, Gaysians podcast, designated Mayer "our goddess, our inspo for this show, our ICON" when they had her on a recent episode. Everyone wants to be seen. Mayer sees, hears, satirizes and commiserates.