March 1, 2020
In Survival of the Thickest, billed as humor/essays but reflecting on her life, Buteau--an actress (First Wives Club), comedian (Netflix and Comedy Central specials), and podcaster (Late Night Whenever) reflects on reaching stardom after growing up Caribbean and "thick" in New Jersey (125,000-copy first printing). Another comedian, also an Emmy Award-winning writer whose digital series, Day Job, was named one of the 100 Best Web Series by TimeOut New York, Schaefer ponies up Grand to recall a well-heeled childhood based on a lie and show how she finally learned acceptance by taking each family member on a one-on-one vacation that ended with her whitewater rafting through the Grand Canyon with her younger sister. Author of the Thurber long-listed The Lost Book of Mormon and Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, Steinberg began by reflecting on classic ideas about love and ended by immersing himself in The Happily Ever After of today's romance industry. Taussig, a disability advocate whose Instagram account is also called Sitting Pretty, considers what it's like to live in a body that moves differently from many others and how we look at the disabled from jaundiced perspectives (e.g., scary, dewily innocent, or an inspiration to us all). Finally, in Being Lolita, Breakout 8 Award-winning writer Wood recalls her troubled romance with her high school English teacher, which includes his giving her--yes, Lolita. To be read with Kate Elizabeth Russell's fiction debut, My Dark Vanessa, publishing in March.
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August 3, 2020
Stand-up comedian Buteau takes a zesty and hilarious look at her life in 19 essays. Buteau grew up in New Jersey as the only child of a customs broker Jamaican mother and a traveling businessman Haitian father, and faced weight issues in her youth. She would raid her father’s closet to borrow his button-down shirts, while explaining to readers that, of her larger size, “Thick means that you’ve got meat on your bones, bitch.” In college in Miami in the mid-’90s, she had a group of friends who supported her (“We all had such different backgrounds, bodies, and goals in life. But what matters is that we had each other’s backs”); and after graduation she landed a job editing video for WNBC in New York City but eventually decided to pursue her love of comedy. Now in her 40s, Buteau writes with side-splitting humor about the men she dated (during a hook-up with a trainer she writes, “Just to make sure he knew what size he was dealing with I sat on his face a little too long”) and the night she met her Dutch photographer husband-to-be at a club in Manhattan (her first impression: “Ugh, another white boy trying to be woke”). The had a long-distance relationship before marrying; together they endured IVF and multiple miscarriages before the birth of twins via surrogacy. Buteau’s spot-on essays combine laughter with wise life lessons.
October 1, 2020
A debut collection of essays from an actor and comedian. In these unabashed, often bawdy sketches, Buteau, perhaps best known for her role on First Wives Club, explores love, womanhood, work, and other topics. Recounting her New Jersey girlhood, the author writes about how her "Jamaican and Haitian" background fueled curiosity, and her "strict immigrant parents" inspired resilience. She also chronicles dating disasters; finding comedy in the wake of 9/11; meeting and marrying her Dutch husband; and braving in vitro fertilization treatments that concluded in surrogacy and twins. Throughout, Buteau conveys a variety of life lessons with mixed success. Some essays turn glib: An exploration of college friendship stumbles into a final truth about valuing acceptance, and a list of "Advice You Can Fit on a Magnet" yields more familiar affirmations than wisdom ("You are worthy. You are perfect. You're amazing. Rinse and repeat"). The author peppers the narrative with frequent slang--e.g., "bish"--and abundant profanity, and she often eschews richer description in favor of fleeting pop culture. Fresher essays vault from breathless humor to thoughtful musing. Buteau's knack for steering absurd situations toward warm insight shines when she describes how a one-time gig emceeing for a male revue led to admiration for a stripper's work ethic; or how losing a tooth while biting a bagel somehow brought her closer to her husband's family. The author's memories about her father brim with fond respect, and her discussions of being busty, curvy, and light-skinned abound with self-empowerment. The real standout essays focus on marriage and motherhood. At turns joyful and sweet about her marriage's early days and heartbreaking about miscarriages, Buteau is reassuring in her candor. Ultimately, this exuberant pastiche from the "sassy tell-it-like-it-is neighbor" is uneven but sometimes genuinely funny. A book for fans of blue humor punctuated with moments of tenderness and wit.
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October 15, 2020
Actress and comedian Buteau is known for being equally forthright and fabulous. In this collection of essays she reveals the depths and origins of both. As a light-skinned Caribbean kid growing up in New Jersey, she dealt with a lot of "what are you" questions. Without siblings to bond with, she made girlfriends who were like sisters, and those tight relationships continued to get her into and out of trouble through her college days in Miami. Most of her trouble centered around bad choices in men, which she recounts hilariously with deftly placed nicknames and pop-culture references. Even when she is tackling serious, life-altering experiences (working as a news editor in New York City on 9/11, struggling through IVF and surrogacy), Buteau achieves a narrative honesty without ever going saccharine. Her sharpness is suffused with a warmth that makes even her most esoteric stories?early stand-up misadventures and culture clashes with her Dutch in-laws?relatable and readable. In addition to offering frank dating advice ("Open your mind, your heart, and your legs"), Buteau offers a heartfelt, snarkily sweet memoir in essays.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)