Youngmi Mayer Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Youngmi Mayer is a published author and a stand up comedian.

She is known for being the host of the podcasts Feeling Asian and Hairy Butthole. Youngmi has appeared on a variety of shows and media, including The Today Show, ABC News, CNN, Rolling Stone, Vice Munchies, The Mind of a Chef and Eater’s Guide to the World.

Youngmi has had her work featured on Comedy Central, Netflix Is A Joke, and BBC. She has also written for publications such as InStyle, Cherry Bombe, Lucky Peach, and Women’s Health Magazine.

Youngmi Mayer is a rarity in that she is one of the comedians working today who has found success in the mainstream and on online platforms. Youngmi resides in New York City where she lives with her son, Mino Bowien.

I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying is a 2024 novel by Youngmi Mayer. If you have been looking for a unique book that is unlike any other and are a fan of memoirs, be sure to look into this book. It could be your next summer reading hit (although this book can be enjoyed in any season)!

When Youngmi Mayer was little, her mother had a truism that she would say when relevant. When her daughter was crying, she would lecture her and ask her if she knew what happens if you laugh while crying– the inevitable answer being that hair grows from your butthole.

It was something that her mother would say in a threatening way after making her daughter laugh while crying. She would use it to cheer her daughter up when she was going through moments where she could tell that her daughter was taken over with grief.

Using the funny saying would always work when it comes to lightening the mood, and it would make the mother and the daughter both laugh and cry at the same time. It was a trick that Youngmi’s mother had in turn learned from her mother, who had also learned it from her own mother, helping many in their family to laugh even though they were suffering or in pain.

In this book, the author and comedian jokes all the way through a retelling of her childhood growing up in Saipan as an offbeat biracial kid. She uses humor as a soft touch to take the reader through her adolescence, which was difficult because she had to serve as a parent to her own mother, who incidentally decided to marry her husband because he looked like a white Jesus as well as a singer in The Bee Gees.

With humor, irreverence, and an open nature, the author is jovial even while she shares the story of what her family had to endure during the last century of war and colonialism in Korea. She also reflects how some years later, their wounds have affected her while living as a single mother in New York City, while also interrogating such topics in the book as gender, whiteness, and sexuality.

Youngmi makes jokes through all of the stories with the hopes that she can impart onto the reader the same gift that her family has passed down through the generations, that of laughing while crying– in short, a hairy butthole. Through all of this, the author has learned that one cannot exist without the other. Like a yin and yang, they go together in a funny and touching memoir that you will not want to miss. Pick up a copy of I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying by Youngmi Mayer to absorb it all from start to finish!