Review: You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar is a memoir focusing on Lacey's experiences as a Black woman in Omaha, Nebraska, with racism. It is funny and serious and gives the reader a snapshot of the exhaustion that comes with being subject to racism. Amber Ruffin is a professionally funny person, I love her Show The Amber Ruffin Show and her contributions to Seth Meyer's show, but her sister Lacey Lamar is also a hilarious lady.

I picked this book up because I love Amber Ruffin. I completely fell in love with her when I first saw her on a "jokes Seth can't tell" segment of Meyer's show and have been following her ever since. If you like the way Amber tells a story on TV, you will like this book; I would particularly recommend the audiobook to get her (and Lacey's!) wonderful voice added! Though the book has quite a few pictures, so I guess I would recommend the multi-media experience! The book has a solid conversational tone; it makes the reading (or listening) experience very fun. It really does feel like you are hanging out with the sisters while they go back and forth telling you stories.

The book obviously tackles serious and traumatic experiences Lacey (and Amber) have been through, though a majority of this book is funny. The humor comes from the excellent storytelling and the reactions to the sheer absurdity of some of the racist nonsense that these women are subjected to. It does switch to a serious tone at times, and they certainly give space for the trauma and pain they experienced; the book is written by very funny people! The balance between funny and serious is really well executed.

The book is a string of experiences; they are very well structured and grouped together in a way that works to combat the lack of resolution to so many of these stories. Obviously, when writing a collection of your own experiences with racism, you are going to have many stories that just are so frustratingly without resolve. You will certainly want to read about many of the subjects of these stories having consequences for the nonsense they say and do, and some get that, but many just go about living their racist lives. This is obviously reflective of the way these actions actually happen in real life, and it could make the book increasingly frustrating to read. But the structure and the writing work so nicely to use that frustration as a part of the narrative that is being told.

I gave this book four stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph! I would recommend this book to anyone who also loves Amber Ruffin, to people that love comedic memoirs, to folks who want to absolutely fly through a book!