PGHwrites: Damon Young’s “That’s How They Get You”

Fresh off his book tour, long-time friend, neighbor, and City of Asylum Board Member Damon Young comes home to share his new anthology, That’s How They Get You, at Alphabet City. In a combination reading and inside scoop full of insights into his process, Damon gets personal with City of Asylum audiences to discuss the very subject that drove this hilarious and unique amalgam of Black voices: humor.

In an interview with NPR, Damon remarked, “Black American humor is the best American humor. And I believe that because I believe that we have to be the most honest about America, about who America is, what America is, you know? And when you’re a people who have been vulnerable the entire time…you pay closer attention…That sort of clarity, that sort of honesty, that sort of reckoning—the best humor comes from that.”

To understand just what Damon means, all you have to do is start reading That’s How They Get You. With words that roast, ignite, and burn while connecting to and coalescing around a singular thesis, the collection emphasizes how and why Black American humor is uniquely transfixing. It is a mixture of not just observational anxieties and stream-of-consciousness lucidities but also acute political clarity about America. Edited and with an introduction by Damon Young, the critically acclaimed author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, the collection features new material from an all-star roster of contributors, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Mahogany L. Browne, Wyatt Cenac, Kiese Laymon, Deesha Philyaw, Roy Wood Jr., Nicola Yoon, and more.

You can purchase a copy of Damon’s anthology, That’s How They Get You, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Damon Young’s debut memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays (Ecco), won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Damon is also a founder of the culture blog Very Smart Brothas and was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post Magazine, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, a columnist for GQ, the creator and host of the Crooked Media podcast Stuck with Damon Young, and was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pittsburgh’s David C. Frederick Honors College. His new anthology, That’s How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor (Pantheon), debuted June 3rd.

About Your Visit: 

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