Youngmi Mayer goes ‘all the way there’ in her new memoir

Youngmi Mayer never had a solid plan to write a book or memoir beyond the way many people talk about writing a book, and knowing which stories from their lives they’d plan to include.

Then, a few people she knew in publishing reached out to her about it, and the 39-year-old multi-hyphenate—and host of one of our favorite podcasts, Hairy B*tth*le with Youngmi Mayer—started to consider it. Initially, the idea was floated of doing a coffee table book with Brian Park, her co-host on her previous podcast Feeling Asian. But then there was, as Mayer describes it, “this boom in Asian American literature that happened,” in which writers of Asian descent were getting really big book deals (which I am all for because our stories matter and need to be told!). Books such as Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H-Mart and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings were released and got a lot of attention.

So the coffee table book evolved into a full-blown memoir, I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying, which was released on Tuesday. In it, Mayer chronicles her life growing up as a biracial kid in Saipan, parenting her own parents and more.

I recently spoke with Mayer about her memoir. We discussed how writing stories about her life differs from just telling those stories, “evil Korean Christian girls” (her words, not mine!) and how two seemingly different things can actually be the same.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Samantha Pak: In your podcast, you talk a lot about your life, your experiences. What was it like to sit down and write some of these stories?
Youngmi Mayer: A podcast episode, making a stand-up joke, making a TikTok video, and then writing a book, those are four extremely different mediums. And I would say it's almost akin to writing a song about an experience, and then creating a dance—where it's so completely using a different part of my brain. I didn't really realize that until I was sitting and writing, and doing it. It was just coming out so differently.

SP: In terms of some of the more emotional stories, was it harder to write those than it has been to talk about them?
YM: Yes, writing is different in that it's a lot bigger and more weighted. You have so much room to really get into every single part of the story. Not only are you telling the story, but there's room for you to ruminate, and get into the depths of what it meant. There's so much freedom and room in writing, just so much time for detail. When I wrote about stuff, I got to places that are way, way deeper than when I'm just telling a story.

SP: How did you pick which stories to include?
YM: One thing that I really like to stress about my writing process is, as somebody that has ADHD, it's an added difficulty. It becomes a barrier when you look at bigger projects like this. I think a lot of people that have a neuro divergence, think that there's a “correct” way to do something—the way that other people do it. It's like, “I need to make an outline, have notes, and research, and organize, and I have to write from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day.

I don't work like that, and I had to fight this self criticism, where I was like, “I'm doing this wrong.” So (I decided) I'm just gonna go with the flow. And so I just literally sat down and wrote it. And then as I was writing it, stuff would just come up that I didn't even think about. It's almost like a stream of consciousness or something. But it would always end up coming to a point—like my brain knew it had something to say, without me knowing.

SP: Were there stories or anecdotes that surprised you that you ended up including?
YM: Sometimes I'd be like, “I want to write about this story that happened in my life.” And I would write about it, and then I would remember a very small detail, which ended up becoming the funniest part of the whole thing. There's one chapter where I talk about my Korean classmates when I moved to Saipan and this Korean clique of really mean Christian girls—the “evil Korean Christian girls,” I think I call them. And it was a whole chapter. And I was like, “Oh, I didn't realize that this was going to be a big story.” I liked it, and I kept it in because it was funny, and it's very revealing for why I'm the kind of person I am. So much about it was very formative.

SP: Your experiences with these girls?
YM: Yeah, in the first grade. And it was just like, “Oh, this really set me up to be a certain kind of person for the rest of my life.” And I didn't even realize how formative it was until I was writing the book. It did really affect me a lot, and it really set me up into feeling a certain way about a certain group of people or a certain type of person.

SP: What was it like to have these realizations? Was it freeing? Cathartic? Was it re-traumatizing?
YM: I don't think any of it was re-traumatizing. My stand-up content is basically about my life. And I think a big part of trying to make something funny is getting to the bottom of why it's sad. So I've always been analyzing stuff that's happened to me for so long. Also, both podcasts that I've had have been about excavating trauma and processing it. So it wasn't new.

The one thing that's harder about writing is you do have to sit in it for so long, you know? If I talk about it on a podcast, I'll talk about it for 20 minutes, and then that's it. But writing about something, I have to sit in it for days or weeks. And there were certain stories that I shared in the book that I remember after writing it, I was just exhausted and felt so bad. I just felt kind of depressed for a week.

SP: You obviously talk about your life, but you also include some of your family's history. What made you choose to include that?
YM: The first three chapters are about my grandparents and my parents. The reason I include that is because I realized that my life is very parallel to my grandma's life. She and I are such similar people, and we have very similar personalities.

I know for a fact that I act this way because I learned it from my mom, who learned it from my grandma. I am my grandma. It's this personality that was passed down to me. There's so many similarities. That's why I want to talk about her life—because that's why I'm like this.

SP: What were some things that you were surprised to learn?
YM: My dad had these stories. He was like, “You know, when I was a kid, my (uncles and aunts) moved back to Germany to become Nazis.” And I was like, “Is that real?” Some of the stuff that my dad said was a little surprising, because a few years after that, they moved back to the states and nothing happened to them. Meanwhile, the Japanese people were being locked up in internment camps. And he was like, “That was really messed up.”

SP: For him to recognize that when he was younger, before “wokeness,” is very impressive.
YM: Well, the other thing is my dad's a hippie. He lived in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. And I think people forget that they were really progressive. Back in the day, there were people that were like, “That's f*cked up that Japanese people were in internment camps.” Now, the boomers have gotten weird, but back then, they were kind of cool!

SP: You talk about growing up in Saipan. First of all, for those of us who may not know, where is that?
YM: Saipan is an island in the Northern Mariana Islands. It's a commonwealth of the United States, but it's not a territory. It's a little bit north of Guam.

SP: How long were you there?
YM: From 6-16. So 10 years.

SP: Was that where the evil church girls were?
YM: I'm scared they're gonna find out. Well, I didn't name them, but they're gonna know who they are, though. My god, that's so bad.

SP: You don't name names.
YM: No, I don't name names, but I don't think she's aware of how much I f*cking hate her *ss. I single out the ring leader, but all of them suck so bad. I don't even care.

SP: So besides the evil church girls, what was it like growing up on that island?
YM: It was really nice. It was really beautiful. I think when I got there, it was still very remote. I remember the day that they put in traffic lights. It was a very great place to live.

SP: Have your parents read the book? Or will you let them? [Laughs.]
YM: They definitely will read it. I should send it to them, but I'm really stressed out about it. But it's not that bad.

They're connected, and that's the point of it. It's not two opposing forces of the universe. It's the fact that the universe is one thing, with everything in it.

SP: What was one of the biggest challenges in terms of writing this book?
YM: I think the challenges were all self imposed. I just keep remembering this one time, I think I had just sent in the proposal, and basically, in my mind, I saw what I wanted the book to be. At that point, I had so many fears: Is it going to sell? And then, if it sells, am I going to be able to write what I'm trying to say in a book? I had this vision of what I wanted the book to be like. And I was like, “Am I going to be able to accomplish that?”

It’s this concept of this taegeuk principle. Which is this old Korean cultural philosophy—like the yin yang, right? The laughing and the crying, and the anger and the happiness. And I'm trying to write my life into these two binaries. But the binaries, they're actually going to be the same thing. And so each chapter of the book is like, white and Korean, or child and adult, or poor and rich. People think it's two opposites, but the actual idea is that it's the same thing. They're connected, and that's the point of it. It's not two opposing forces of the universe. It's the fact that the universe is one thing, with everything in it.

After I finished the book, I felt happy with it, because I did that in the way that I was hoping to.

SP: On the flip side, what was your favorite part about writing the book?
YM: I guess it's tied to what was hard about it. Another idea I had about the book was I really wanted it to be very not boring—interesting the whole time. I didn't want any dead space. I wanted it to be the juiciest parts, the saddest, funniest parts, the worst parts, the best, just every page to be jam packed with that.

And so writing it, I ended up laughing a lot, just because I would just go all the way there. I would have a sad memory, take it all the way to the saddest part, and then I would just, in that moment, write a joke and make myself laugh. Then I was imagining somebody sitting there, like, “Oh god, this is so sad and torturous.” And then there’s a joke.