Her memoir offers painful observations on growing up. She wants you to laugh while crying

Welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. This week we speak with comedian and first-time author Youngmi Mayer, whose new memoir “I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying” chronicles her life as a Korean American grappling with identity, trauma, history — and hilarity. Mayer writes about how her mother learned English largely because she grew besotted with Bee Gees lead singer Barry Gibb, whom she came to conflate with Jesus: “She went to worship to gawk at this man on Sundays after dancing to his music all night at a nightclub on Saturdays.” Mayer calls this singer/savior figure “Be’Jesus.” But Mayer, whose mother is Korean and father is American, also offers trenchant and often painful observations, on growing up mixed race, the suicide crisis in South Korea, and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. “It means they can throw us away.” I spoke with Mayer about her mother’s stories and the strong possibility that her memoir will make some people angry. The week in books A one-off appearance on “Family Matters” turned into a career for Jaleel White, author of “Growing Up Urkel: A Memoir.” Ilana Masad reviews Edwin Frank’s “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel.” Masad writes that Frank “makes the case for what, exactly, a 20th century novel is, what its authors’ methods and goals were, and how the unprecedented events of an ever more interconnected world shaped it.” Leigh Haber reviews Maya Kessler’s sex-fueled debut novel, “Rosenfeld.” To Haber, “this mostly seductive novel would have benefited from a little less intermingling of fluids and a little more merging of souls.” Malia Mendez reports on Los Angeles author Percival Everett winning the National Book Award for Fiction.