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.

*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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538719367
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/12/2021
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	11,181
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amber Ruffin is 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 the staff in 2014, and was a writer/sometimes performer on HBO's Black Lady Sketch Show. She is about to launch her own late night show, The Amber Ruffin Show which will anchor the new NBC streaming service, Peacock.

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

"The book is a portrait of one person’s struggle to maintain dignity, strength and self-respect when faced with injustices small and large—all told with Ruffin’s irreverent, sardonic style."—People

“This timely and timeless book is hilarious, insightful, aggravating and comforting in equal measure.”—Salon

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

"If you laugh half as hard as I did at the FIRST story in this book, let alone the rest of the book, you will have gotten your money's worth. The stories made me laugh and they made me sad. I
know I'm not the only one to experience these kinds of moments but it helps to know that someone else-poor little Black Lacey taking on the lion's share of
Nebraska's white ignorance all by her lonesome- experiences it too. From the mental gymnastics needed to call a black store dirty then drive out of state in order to avoid said dirt only to wind up shopping in a sty operating in a white neighborhood to having the gall to try and holluh at black women on a dating app when your profile pics have the confederate flag in them, Amber & Lacey point out how white folks are apparently doing the most in them parts."—Retta, comedian andactress (Parks & Recreation, Good Girls)

"The message of this book is for ALL of us and no matter why YOU'RE here —
perhaps you're a fan of Amber Ruffin's comedy, or a Seth Meyers' fan, or a personal friend of Lacey's, or maybe you're just a person browsing for a book that will help you understand the Black experience in America and the other ones seem too much like school — I urge you to BUY THIS BOOK. The stories are delivered with the humor and horror they deserve. You will laugh, you will be enraged,
and if you are a white person, you will understand more than you did before about the truth of being Black in
America — even if you thought you understood a lot already because you read the hard school books."—Busy Philipps, author, actor,white lady

"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

"Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A must-read that will have Black women feeling seen and heard, and will allow others to better understand the effects of racism. With YA crossover appeal, this is also an excellent choice for book clubs."—Library Journal (starred review)

“Featuring the authors' razor-sharp wit and limitless brilliance, these true tales of injustice are a gift to readers.”—Booklist (starred review)

"Expertly balancing laugh-out-loud humor and descriptions of deplorable actions...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...This is an excellently executed account, rich with vivid insight."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Amber and Lacey hysterically walk us through a minefield of empirically traumatizing events, finding a way to make us laugh while weeping for the state of our nation; a place where two brilliant women are made to feel that somehow it is they who are missing the mark."—Natasha Lyonne, quadruplethreat, noted surrealist

From the Publisher

01/22/2021

With frank humor, Amber Ruffin, a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers, collaborates with sister Lacey Lamar to tell a series of stories describing life as a Black woman in the United States. The authors complement each other, and succeed in drawing readers into the setting of their military family and childhood in Omaha. Black women will relate to many of the situations Lamar has experienced throughout her life, such as being mistaken for another coworker or a random Black celebrity as well as being followed in department stores or accused of shoplifting. What sets the book apart is Lamar's firsthand recollections along with Ruffin's commentary on the ongoing emotional toll of racism. The inclusion of photographs of the sisters throughout adds to the personal perspective. Black women will find themselves nodding along as Lamar navigates the workplace, dealing with the emotions of coworkers who have never worked with a Black woman before or people who don't recognize her after she changes a hairstyle. As Ruffin plainly states, "white vulnerability is valuable and Black vulnerability puts the Black person in danger." VERDICT A must-read that will have Black women feeling seen and heard, and will allow others to better understand the effects of racism. With YA crossover appeal, this is also an excellent choice for book clubs.—Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

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

Read More