My Life as a Goddess
A Memoir through (Un)Popular Culture
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4.1 • 23 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Smart, fast, clever, and funny (As f*ck!)” (Tiffany Haddish), this collection of side-splitting and illuminating essays by the popular stand-up comedian, alum of Chelsea Lately and The Mindy Project, and host of truTV’s Talk Show the Game Show is perfect for fans of the New York Times bestsellers Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby.
From a young age, Guy Branum always felt as if he were on the outside looking in.
From a stiflingly boring farm town, he couldn’t relate to his neighbors. While other boys played outside, he stayed indoors reading Greek mythology. And being gay and overweight, he got used to diminishing himself. But little by little, he started learning from all the sad, strange, lonely outcasts in history who had come before him, and he started to feel hope.
In this “singular, genuinely ballsy, and essential” (Billy Eichner) collection of personal essays, Guy talks about finding a sense of belonging at Berkeley—and stirring up controversy in a newspaper column that led to a run‑in with the Secret Service. He recounts the pitfalls of being typecast as the “Sassy Gay Friend,” and how, after taking a wrong turn in life (i.e. law school), he found stand‑up comedy and artistic freedom. He analyzes society’s calculated deprivation of personhood from fat people, and how, though it’s taken him a while to accept who he is, he has learned that with a little patience and a lot of humor, self-acceptance is possible.
“Keenly observant and intelligent, Branum’s book not only offers uproarious insights into walking paths less traveled, but also into what self-acceptance means in a world still woefully intolerant of difference” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). My Life as a Goddess is an unforgettable and deeply moving book by one of today’s most endearing and galvanizing voices in comedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comedian Branum, known for his appearances on Chelsea Lately, combines sharp insight and self-deprecating humor in this sparkling collection of essays about life as a fat gay comic. "If you are at all interested in being a goddess, may I suggest starting this book by believing in yourself?" he writes, setting the theme for his story beginning with his childhood. Growing up in the farm town of Yuba City, Calif. ("not the good part of California"), Branum always felt out of place, particularly with a wild sister and an abusive, controlling father. He enrolled at the Univ. of California at Berkeley as a Republican, but the liberal setting influenced him. He next attended law school at the University of Minnesota, where, working at a small legal publication where his "job was to keep track of how much a dead baby was worth," he developed his dark sense of humor. With sparkling prose, the author offers an inspiring treatise on the accomplishments of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (with U.S. v. Virginia "she got to write the gender equal protection decision she'd been asking for all those years"), observations on the anti-gay sentiments in 1983's Eddie Murphy: Delirious (which he enjoyed as a young adult but disliked as he got older), and a heartfelt musing on being a closeted gay man dating women, and his own coming out. This is an incisive and witty memoir.
Customer Reviews
Fabulous
This book is not only a well written, funny memoir it is also a very thorough examination of society through the eyes of a gay man.