You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

by Amber Ruffin, Lacey Lamar

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

As a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Myers, Amber Ruffin has long entertained fans with her hilarious sketches and check-ins with her sister Lacey, who lives in Nebraska. In her first book, Amber details the everyday racism they both face, from the subtle to the outrageous.

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
*INDIE NEXT PICK*
*A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR*

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538719367
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/12/2021
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amber Ruffin is the host of The Amber Ruffin Show on NBC's streaming service, Peacock, and a writer and cast member on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers. She also amazingly became the first black woman to write for a late-night talk show in American history when she joined Seth's staff in 2014, and was a writer/sometimes performer on HBO's Black Lady Sketch Show. 

Lacey Lamar is Amber Ruffin's big sister. She has worked in the healthcare and human service field for more than twenty-five years, thirteen of those working with troubled youth in her community. She volunteers her time and resources to black, brown refugee and indigenous fellow humans in any way she can. Lacey lives in Nebraska with her unbelievable amazing daughter Imani and their 130lb Great Dane Izzy.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Why? Why Would a Person Do This? xv

About the Authors xix

Intro xxi

I Got a Million of 'Em 1

I Find This Hard to Believe 36

Is This a Joke? 71

I Do Not Care for These Stories 113

Let's Take a Break and Have Some More Silly Stories 136

White Church: The Worst Place on Earth 158

Amber Ruins the Book 168

I Want to Put This Book Down and Run Away from It 179

There's Nothing I Can Say to You to Make You Believe These Stories, but Here They Are Anyway 194

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/11/2021

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. Agent: Anthony Mattero, CAA. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"I
dare you to read this hilarious and eye-opening book and not become obsessed with Amber Ruffin."—Mindy Kaling


"Amber and Lacey have the gift of making you comfortable enough to laugh at events that will also make you cringe. This book is an opportunity for black people to know you're not alone in how you've experienced the world. And for everyone this book is a chance to see a layer of this world that you might have been blind to. You'll leave both with a laugh and a little more knowledge."—Roy Wood, Jr., correspondent, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2021

Sisters Ruffin and Lamar compare their personal and professional lives in a funny, vivid account that unpacks the realities of coping with constant racism.

Library Journal

★ 2020-11-03
Comedy writer Ruffin recounts the endless indignities involved in being a Black woman in America, with her older sister as foil.

The Ruffin sisters grew up with a mother who “has a bad case of the smarts…and…isn’t fond of people messing with her children”—messing that comes daily from the White residents of Omaha, Nebraska, a city, Ruffin reminds us, that may sound like Hicksville, USA, but is larger than New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. Those White citizens think nothing of using the N-word, nor of touching Black women’s hair, nor of assuming that the Black residents of Omaha are violent and thievish. The latter assumptions build in ways that the sisters find sometimes amusing, sometimes hurtful, always astonishingly awful. Lamar—who remained in Omaha while Ruffin moved to New York, where she writes for Late Night With Seth Meyers—recounts a trip to a store when a friend asked about the cost of a Rolex on display. Told “expensive,” her friend replied, “Bitch, I’ll take two.” Lamar got the same response when she asked about a coffee table and then was floored when the manager informed her of the hardly shattering price tag of $200. Some indignities are nearly inexplicable: One man tried an online come-on with a Confederate flag as backdrop; an elementary school teacher attributed slavery to keeping-up-with-the-Joneses peer pressure. “The reaction always varies because you can only put up with what you can put up with when you can put up with it,” writes Ruffin. “And here’s a little reminder that we shouldn’t have to put up with this shit AT ALL!” Most of the time, the sisters’ reactions are a kind of knowing exasperation. “We are not into trying to educate white America, but maybe we accidentally did,” they conclude. The education is no accident, and White readers can certainly use the wake-up call.

Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism.

Kirkus Reviews

Comedian Amber Ruffin (“The Amber Ruffin Show”) and Lacey Lamar are sisters and co-narrators of this hilarious romp through a series of unfortunate encounters with the racially ignorant. They take turns narrating their no-holds-barred commentary on the incidents that happen to Lacey, a Black woman, in homogenous white Nebraska. Ruffin and Lamar are upbeat as they share their sharp wit, which helps to buffer the underlying racism in each account. The audiobook peels back the layers of how often and how absurdly poorly Lacey is treated, and it’s both infuriating and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes all within the same moment. Don’t miss this engaging and educational listen. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

Comedian Amber Ruffin (“The Amber Ruffin Show”) and Lacey Lamar are sisters and co-narrators of this hilarious romp through a series of unfortunate encounters with the racially ignorant. They take turns narrating their no-holds-barred commentary on the incidents that happen to Lacey, a Black woman, in homogenous white Nebraska. Ruffin and Lamar are upbeat as they share their sharp wit, which helps to buffer the underlying racism in each account. The audiobook peels back the layers of how often and how absurdly poorly Lacey is treated, and it’s both infuriating and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes all within the same moment. Don’t miss this engaging and educational listen. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile