Youngmi Mayer on Writer’s Block, Balancing Emotions and Finding Humour in Sadness in Her New Memoir, “I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying”

Words: Sabrina Cooper

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“There’s a saying in Korea: if you laugh while crying, hair grows out of your butthole. Like when we were kids usually when our parents beat our asses and we would start crying, they would tell us jokes and then we would start laughing. And then they would be like, ‘Do you know what happens when you laugh and cry at the same time? Hair grows out of your butthole.’” - Youngmi Mayer 

Korean-American Youngmi Mayer continues to make the internet chuckle — and sometimes sob — with her hilarious memes, TikTok impersonations and two podcasts (Feeling Asian and Hairy Butthole). To add to her achievements and provide even more infinitely readable content for her audience, Mayer has written a riveting memoir about the gamut of her experiences in “I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying”. The book explores how she’s navigated life as a mixed-Asian child in South Korea and Saipan, while growing up under challenging domestic circumstances as well as taking into account generational trauma from Korea’s colonial and wartime past. Mayer details her earlier years in San Francisco up until the present day, where she is currently a single mother working and living in New York City.

How did Mayer make it through the roughest times? Through her preternatural ability to process and unpack situations with wit and wisdom, an extraordinary strength while truthfully admitting her weaknesses and of course, making herself laugh.

A fundamental theme of yin and yang comes through in her narrative: two opposing forces existing in the same space. Here, Mayer speaks with Polyester on her personal history, identity on and offline and what she might expect after readers finish her book.  

How did the book idea come about?

Youngmi: I was reached out to from a few people in the publishing world. A lot of them came to know me because of the Feeling Asian podcast. They were saying, you should work on a book: You should write a pitch, whether it's Feeling Asian or whatever you want to write about — even a memoir. After I heard from people saying that I should pitch something, I reached out to Kim Witherspoon (my ex-husband's agent) because she is well known. I was just shocked that she took my phone call. I was so flattered that she would even listen to me.

Then after that, she was like why don't you write something, send it in and we'll look at it. I wrote the chapter that's now the one about the Florida Santa: Why I stopped writing for 20 years because that would be a good intro. Immediately she was like, this is great.

I'm going to ask a difficult question: how did you approach revisiting and writing painful moments?

I have this thing where I have blindness to stuff that's going to be hard for me until after the fact, which is good. Because when writing about it, I was like, well, today I'm going to write about my eating disorder. Then afterward, I was depressed lying in bed. 

After I wrote that part, I didn't write for like two months and I was getting anxiety. During that whole time I was in a fog: I’m so out of touch. Even when I wasn't writing, I felt depressed. I remember feeling like I couldn't leave my house. What's wrong with me? Why do I feel so — why am I so lazy? It was only after looking back where I was like, oh, that was really hard for me to write.

How do you maintain balance through the bullshit and the goodness. What grounds you?

I don't know. Maybe this is wrong that I look at my life like this, but my relationship to the idea of the yin yang, the Taoism, is different because I always see in the West it's introduced as this thing like you need to seek out balance and do this by meditating. You have to actively go toward that universal truth. 

But I see it as it happens to us or to me. It's not really in my control. I don't know if that's correct. There is some truth to seeking that and moving towards that. We have to be active in that, but how I see life is like, it just happens whether you want it to or not.

I work in a restaurant and I always see this thing where — something that my mom used to say — if I have a really mean customer, I will always have a really nice customer too.

What's one of your favourite memories that makes you laugh and cry at the same time?

I'll give you a funny one relating more to my son.

I remember when he was first born, he was traumatising. For anyone who's had a newborn, it's actual trauma. I tell people, back in the old days, women had children and men went to war because that’s an equal amount of trauma. Six kids on a farm. 

But when he was a newborn, I was in this delirious state. I was in so much pain. It was like the third or fourth day. Me and his dad were yelling at each other. It was the worst: no sleep. He was creaming again and I wanted to go change his diaper. When they're so little, even tiny diapers are giant on them. I wanted to change his diaper and his balls were hanging out of the diaper by themselves. I was screaming at his dad, like, ‘I don't know what I'm doing.’ And my boobs are leaking and they’re this big and then I remember: Me and his dad just started laughing so hard. We're just in tears. We're just like, ‘Oh my god, that's so funny.’ How did that even happen? And it's kind of sad. I was like, does it hurt? It's like elastic, but it's like, I was laughing so hard.

What kind of reaction would you like Asian people to have after reading your book? What are you anticipating the response to be like?

My entire life has been like fighting for their approval as somebody that doesn't fit in. Maybe I wasn't even telling myself this, but I was writing this book to be like I do know about us and I am part of you.

I was covertly trying to be like, ‘You thought that I wasn't good enough’, or ‘I didn't know, but I do now’, ‘I’ve been here the whole time, and I've been watching’, ‘What you think I'm not like, I am that but, I've known all along’. My desire probably is that Asian people look at it and they're like, ‘She knows everything. And she is part of us’. 

Even my friends in Korea they're like, you're so Korean: you are like a Korean person — you’re not like Korean-American like you have this way where you say slang words or mannerisms that are a little bit more like a Korean person. Most Asian people recognize that but then there is this other group of Asian people that react very strongly to me: No, you're not, you're not Asian — you’re wrong.

How about your parents’ reactions?

I think my parents will like it in a weird way. They'll have a lot of feelings. I think my parents will be embarrassed and upset. I think overall they'll like it. I think they'll be proud and they'll be happy that I did it. It’ll take them a minute to get there.