W. Kamau Bell - The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6 4, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mamas Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian

H ello, reader.

Before you start reading, I have a question: Why are you reading this particular book?

Do you have a dead spot in the pit of your stomach that has been there for months and isnt going away? Are you kind of afraid that it never will? Are you feeling stuck? Trying to figure out your next move? Questioning everything that you held dear and wondering how you could have been so wrong about what everybody else in this country was holding dear? Are you unsure of how you are going to continue dealing with the level of hate in the world and, worse, the level of hate you have to deal with when you want to talk about the level of hate in the world? (Just me??)

Lets talk about the racism that we all deal with every day!

You would want to talk about the racism, YOU RACIST!

Wait, what?

[Expletive.] [N-word.] [Thinly veiled death threat.]...

Are you (like me) hoping that the recent events in American history will kick-start the 1960s all over again? Or are you secretly happy that all of this happened because your life is pretty much golden and you were hoping for things to get more interesting because TV hasnt really been interesting since the final episode of Mad Men?... Or was it Breaking Bad? No... it was definitely The Sopranos... unless it was The Wire... Yes! TV hasnt been good since the last episode of The Wire. Ahhhh, doesnt it feel good to be distracted again?

Wait... Is that why youre reading this book? Is it serving as a distraction until the new season of Game of Thrones (or Luke Cage or Insecure or Empire or Veep) begins? OH MY GOD, VEEP IS SO GOOD! Julia Louis-Dreyfus is on the Mount Rushmore of comedy!

If its a distraction you want, you might be in the wrong place. I like getting distracted, but I cant seem to turn away from everything that is happening right now. It feels like things are slipping away. It feels like just showing up isnt enough. It feels like the day before the beginning of one of the Mad Max movies. Maybe that is the distraction we need. I want to see what exactly happened the day BEFORE the world turned into a post-apocalyptic desert and people began paying thirty bucks for an ounce of water. I want to see a just-pre-post-apocalyptic film. Like the eve of the post-apocalypse. Maybe that will help us make sense of things. What happened that night? Im betting those people didnt know it was the night before the apocalypse. I bet they were just sitting around saying something like, Wow! I never expected that candidate to win the presidency!... Oh well! Well get through this! Like we always do!

Cut to the next day and a bald-headed Charlize Theron is driving a car across a barren wasteland for ninety minutes. Because, eventually... You. Dont. Get. Through. It.

Thats what happened in that movie, right? I never actually saw it. I prefer my post-apocalyptic movies to be more like The Book of Eli, because you literally... Cant. Go. Wrong. With. Denzel. Washington.

Are you reading this book because you feel like this may just be the just-pre-post-apocalypse? Like maybe we are currently living through the sequel to the fall of the Roman Empire? (Makes sense. We love sequels.) Are you reading this because this is just about the end and this book seems like a good read to end the world with?

Well, I dont know that I have any answers for the end of the world. And any distraction I have to offer comes in the form of awkward tales from my past. (Like the time when I was a kid and I wore fur-lined leather boots, which I LOVED, to elementary school, only to learn later that I was made fun of all day because they were girls boots. My first window into the idea that gender is a continuum... like flavors of chocolate. Milk chocolate, YES! Dark chocolate... Well, I guess. Just this once.) But Im sitting here writing this book as a way to grapple with some of the questions that this crazy, upside-down time has produced, both in me and in the world.

Maybe that is why you are here? To watch someone grapple with some questions? Perhaps you have heard me do just that on my podcast Politically Re-Active. Or are you one of the small but mighty who still feels like my yearlong FX (and later FXX, and after that FXX-ed) show, Totally Biased, was 1. groundbreaking and 2. canceled too soon. (Hint: 1. Could be. Who am I to say? 2. Definitely not.) Maybe you were shocked by how my seemingly ridiculous fanboy podcast