You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey
Crazy Stories about Racism
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4.5 • 137 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK*
Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism.
Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey.
From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
On Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Amber Ruffin Show, comedian Amber Ruffin regularly faces racism head-on with a mixture of absurdist giggles and no-nonsense fury. In her first book, Ruffin (co-written with her sister Lacey Lamar) deliberately focuses on the laughs. Unlike Amber, Lacey still lives in their hometown of Omaha, working in healthcare and dealing with everyday prejudice, both clueless and malevolent. The sisters’ stories are almost always funny and usually maddening: A drunken woman shoving her whole hand into Amber’s hair at a Christmas party is astonishing in her chutzpah, and there’s a department-store chain you may have questions for after one infuriating chapter. Rather than a book that tells white people what not to do—although seriously, please don’t do these things—You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey lets Black people know that they’re not alone in the wild and shocking—and sometimes funny—things that happen to them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Late Night with Seth Meyers writer Ruffin and her sister, Lamar, recount the racism Lamar has experienced growing up and living in Omaha, Neb., expertly balancing laugh-out-loud humor and descriptions of deplorable actions. The authors chronicle the "constant flow of racism one must endure to live in the Midwest," with stories of Lamar getting consistently followed by security at JC Penney as a child, being publicly humiliated by a teacher who made her move to the back of the classroom, getting fired for calling out racist mistreatment from her boss, and being mistaken for Whoopi Goldberg and Harriet Tubman. While the writing is consistently funny, the severity of the racism is never downplayed; Ruffin and Lamar show the necessity of embracing humor as a coping mechanism. As Ruffin states at the book's close, "This is not every experience and it is not a lifetime's worth of stories. And, with that said, isn't it waaaay more than you expected?" This is an excellently executed account, rich with vivid insight.
Customer Reviews
good (awful) stories, well-told
The book is fine and instructive but it would have been more enjoyable to read if the publisher had followed the format of the print edition and set each author’s words in a different typeface. It says in the first chapter that one woman’s words will be in serif and the other in sans-serif, but instead it’s all one font throughout. Sloppy.
You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey
It gives a person everything they ever need to know about American whites.
Great read
Enlightening & entertaining.