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Marie Arendt
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FOOLISH

Sarah Cooper

Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humilation

In this hilariously revealing debut memoir, comedian Sarah Cooper charts her rise from lip-synching in church to lip-synching the president, and all the dad issues she collected along the way.
As the youngest of four in a tight-knit Jamaican family, Cooper cut her teeth in the mean cornfields of suburban Maryland. Soon she became a charmingly neurotic woman trying to break her worst patterns and reclaim her linen closet. From an early obsession with hair bands to her struggle to escape the immigrant-to-basic-bitch pipeline to her use of the Internet as a marriage counselor (after being fired by two real ones), and the curse of her TED Talk vibe, Cooper invites us to share in her triumphs and humiliations as she tries (and fails) to balance her own dreams with the American dream. With determination and wit, Cooper mines a lifetime of oppressive perfectionism for your laughter and enjoyment: as she moves from tech to comedy, marriage to divorce, smart to foolish, while proving once and for all that being foolish is actually the smartest thing you can do. FOOLISH will appeal to readers of Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling, Samantha Irby, Issa Rae, Tina Fey and more. Sarah Cooper, who has 3.3 million followers across social media, is a writer, producer, actress, and author of the books How to Be Successful without Hurting Men's Feelings: Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women and 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get by Without Even Trying, as well as the star of the hit Netflix comedy special, Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine. Cooper built her comedy career in between working for companies like Yahoo! and Google, where she was fed free lunches and lots of material. She was named one of Variety's "10 Comics to Watch for 2020" and one of Vulture's "The Comedians You Should and Will Know in 2020." Her current projects include Unfrosted, an upcoming Netflix comedy written by, directed by, and starring Jerry Seinfeld. She has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair and countless others. Follow her for tour dates and all the cute photos that didn't make it into the book.
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Published 2023-10-03 by Dutton

Comments

An emotional buffet of hilarity, you'll just keep going back for more.

Sarah is the funniest, smartest person I know and this book is another triumph.

Delightful, complicated.

Cooper, a recently ascended star having utilized the internet to get famous with her pointed, withering, performance-based political satire, possesses a direct and fierce comic voice, and in her previous books, she took down cultural dinosaurs. Here, she explores, thoroughly examines, and mocks herself, her past, and her motivations and shows how you too can find your voice, comic or otherwise, and use it to exorcise your demons.

Sarah's many talents continue to infuriate me.

Sarah's IG Live pre-publication book tour Read more...

Cooper demonstrates her prowess and staying power as a comedian, co-opting laughter to uncover something essential about the relationship immigrants have with race in America, the way love and desire create blind spots, and the self-consciousness and chaos that can so easily accompany fame, especially the rapid, viral kind... A delightful collection of essays that are both funny and revealing.

[A] witty memoir-in-essays from comedian Cooper... she catalogs her difficulties juggling a passion for comedy with a career in tech, her unsuccessful stabs at romance... and eventually, her quest to convert her viral social media videos into a bona fide entertainment career. Throughout, Cooper is unfailingly funny and consistently relatable. This is sure to please Cooper's fans and likely to net her new ones.