Black Friend: Essays

The comedian and former host of the satirical Showtime talk show Ziwe debuts with a forthright collection of personal essays on identity and race. “Discomfort” offers insight into Ziwe’s idiosyncratic brand of humor, revealing that she felt able to ask uncomfortable questions to guests on her show because “I have felt uncomfortable my entire life” as the daughter of Nigerian immigrant parents growing up in New England (she recounts feeling like an outsider as a child for missing sleepovers because her parents “didn’t trust other people”). In “How Many Black Friends Do You Have?” Ziwe muses that white guests on her Showtime and Instagram Live programs often answered with “four or five” because more than 10 feels transparently “arbitrary,” six to 10 comes across as “commodif[ying] the brown people in your life,” and fewer than three makes one appear “part of the problem.” Other entries discuss Ziwe’s encounter with a “Karen” while roaming the woods near her upstate New York Airbnb and feeling compelled to go by a mononym professionally because white people struggled to get her full name right. The intimate selections offer a rare look beneath Ziwe’s comedic persona, and the humor amuses (she calls group projects “a byproduct of the stupid rights lobby to hold advanced students who did the homework back from reaching their true potential”). Ziwe’s fans will appreciate the energetic mix of comedy and personal reflection. (Oct.)