Cack-Handed is comedian Gina Yashere's entertaining memoir celebrating the adventures and improbable journey that led to her successful international stand-up comedy and TV career. Yashere--British correspondent on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah and co-creator of Bob ♥ Abishola--catapulted into the American comedy scene in 2008, with a vibrant onstage presence and irreverent style.
Yashere's formative years were defined by her Nigerian mother's fiercely protective parenting and interpretation of everything fun as a threat to her five children's career prospects. Many years on, Yashere deploys memories of her mother's extreme strictness in her stand-up routines to brilliant comic effect, peeling away any resentment she felt as a child to reveal the love behind such a demanding maternal presence.
She suffered as a teenager at the hands of an abominably behaved stepfather and rebelled against her mother's rigid rules, culminating in a suicide attempt. After a strong academic performance in school, Yashere became the first female engineer at the elevator company Otis. She explored her sexuality and let off steam in London's thriving nightclub scene. Drawn to acting, Yashere took a detour from engineering to pursue her dream of performing comedy on stage in England, the U.S. and beyond. The term "cack-handed," meaning awkward and clumsy, also represents the author's embrace of an unconventional career and free-spirited lifestyle.
British racism, more genteel than the American kind, featured prominently in Yashere's early comedy career, and she exposes the blatant absurdity of all forms of discrimination. Enhanced by Yashere's splendid storytelling and generous wit, Cack-Handed honors the emotionally resilient, cosmopolitan, proud Black lesbian identity Yashere confidently claims as her own. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer