# I Curse You with Joy by Tiffany Haddish Source: https://thegisthub.com/books/i-curse-you-with-joy-by-tiffany-haddish Last updated: 2026-10-24 Published 2024 · 248 pages · ISBN 9781635769531 · Categories: Memoir and biography I Curse You with Joy is Tiffany Haddish's second memoir, a 2024 collection of essays about fame after Girls Trip, childhood trauma, reuniting with her Eritrean father and choosing joy. For fans of candid, raunchy comedy memoirs. ## The gist Tiffany Haddish follows The Last Black Unicorn with essays about what came after her breakout in Girls Trip: a Netflix special, the Oscars, hosting Saturday Night Live. She also goes back to the hard years: a mother whose head injury left her mentally ill and violent, foster care, learning to read late and living in her car. The emotional center is her search for her Eritrean father and their reunion when she was 27, about a decade before his death. Between raunchy jokes and frank talk about sex, she writes about racism, grief and self-worth. The title is her answer to critics: she curses them with joy. ## Key ideas ### 1. Answer cruelty with joy Haddish admits she reads the cruel comments people post about her. The title is her response. People try to curse her with mean words, so she curses them with joy. She refuses to let critics decide how she feels. The idea runs through the whole book: joy is not a lack of pain, but a choice she makes again and again in response to it. ### 2. Humor as a survival tool As a child, Haddish lived with a mother who became mentally ill and violent after a head injury. She later entered foster care. Being funny kept people from hurting her and made them want her around. She shows how comedy began as protection and later became her career. Her essays suggest that laughing at pain can be a way of surviving it. ### 3. Shame loses power when you name it Haddish writes openly about things many people hide: not learning to read well until her teens, living in her car, miscarriages and her own insecurity. By telling these stories with humor, she takes away their sting. She suggests that secrets keep shame alive, and that saying them out loud, even as a joke, lets you move past them. It is a lesson for anyone who carries an old secret. ### 4. Finding a lost parent is complicated Haddish's Eritrean father left when she was very young. She searched for years and finally found him when she was 27. Their reunion brings love and a connection to her roots, but also hard questions about a parent who left. Years later he dies, and she buries him in Eritrea. The story shows that reconnecting can heal and hurt at the same time. ### 5. Fame does not cure insecurity After Girls Trip, Haddish hosts Saturday Night Live, wins an Emmy, presents at the Oscars and records a Netflix special. Yet she still has to remind herself that she belongs. She describes the pressure, the demands and the online criticism that come with success. The lesson is that outside success does not fix the beliefs you learned as a child. ### 6. Representation validates lives Haddish writes about the barriers she faced as a Black woman in entertainment, from being underpaid to being boxed into stereotypes. Mainstream shows rejected her style for years. She argues that representation is not about checking boxes. When people see someone like them succeed on screen, it tells them their own experience is real and matters. The point applies to any group that rarely sees itself on screen. ### 7. Remember where you came from The later essays return to South Central Los Angeles, where she grew up. She writes about friends and family lost to violence and police injustice, about racial profiling, and about her wish to give back to the neighborhood. She reflects on the murder of George Floyd. Success, for Haddish, carries a duty to the community that shaped her. She treats giving back as part of what success means. ## Questions this book answers ### What is I Curse You with Joy about? I Curse You with Joy is Tiffany Haddish's second memoir, a 2024 essay collection. It covers her fame after Girls Trip, including hosting Saturday Night Live, and goes back to her childhood with a mentally ill mother, foster care and homelessness. Its emotional center is her reunion with her Eritrean father. It mixes raunchy humor with grief and advice about choosing joy. ### What does I Curse You with Joy mean? Haddish has said the title is her answer to critics and online trolls. People try to curse her with mean words and nasty thoughts, so she curses them with joy instead. She refuses to let cruelty decide her mood. The phrase sums up the book's theme of choosing joy in response to pain. ### When did I Curse You with Joy come out? It was announced in 2022 for a November release with another publisher, but it came out in May 2024 from Diversion Books. It follows her first memoir, The Last Black Unicorn, from 2017. Haddish narrates the audiobook herself. ### What does Tiffany Haddish write about her father? Her father, a refugee from Eritrea, left the family when she was very young. She searched for him for years and found him when she was 27. The reunion brought love and a link to her Eritrean roots, along with hard questions. He died years later, and in 2018 she traveled to Eritrea to bury him. ### Is I Curse You with Joy as good as The Last Black Unicorn? Opinions are mixed. Many readers find it frank, funny and moving, especially the chapters about her father. Others say it feels more like a stand-up set than a memoir, with repetitive sexual jokes and uneven pacing. Readers who loved her first book often recommend the audiobook, which she narrates. ## Full summary ### The second act **I Curse You with Joy** is the second book by the comedian and actor **Tiffany Haddish**, published in 2024. Her first, *The Last Black Unicorn* (2017), told the story of her hard childhood and her climb to a breakout role. This book picks up the story and also goes back to fill in what the first one left out. It is a collection of essays rather than a single timeline. Each essay takes a period, a person or a lesson. Readers of the first book will recognize some of the people and events. Here she returns to them from a later point in her life, with more distance and more reflection on how they shaped her. The book was first announced in 2022 for another publisher. It came out in May 2024 from Diversion Books. Haddish narrates the audiobook herself, and many readers say her delivery suits the material. The title explains her attitude. Haddish has said she reads what people write about her online, including the cruel comments. Her answer is not to curse back. People try to curse her with mean words, she says, so she curses them with joy. The phrase sums up the book's theme: choosing joy is her way of surviving pain and answering hate. ### A hard childhood, retold Haddish grows up in South Los Angeles. When she is a child, her mother suffers a serious head injury in a car accident. Afterward her mother is a different person. She becomes mentally ill and violent, and she beats Tiffany. Her mother is a **Jehovah's Witness**, and Haddish tells funny stories about the strict rules she grew up with, such as her mother's warnings about what boys could pass on through a kiss. At 13, Haddish enters **foster care** and is separated from her mother. She moves between homes and later lives with her grandmother. She struggles in school and does not learn to read well until her teens. She writes about the shame of hiding that she could not read. As a young adult, before her career takes off, she lives in her car for a time. She jokes that she was the "cute homeless" girl. She credits humor with saving her. As a child, being funny kept people from hurting her and made them like her. A comedy camp for at-risk teenagers gave her a first taste of the stage. ### Finding her voice, then fame Several essays cover her long years in stand-up before fame. She performs in small clubs, takes any job she can and faces rejection. Her style is loud, physical and sexually frank, and the people who run mainstream comedy shows, including *Saturday Night Live*, at first turn her down. She keeps working because she believes in her own voice. She writes about being a Black woman in the entertainment industry. She describes being underpaid, being boxed into stereotypes and having to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. She argues that representation matters because it validates the lives of people who rarely see themselves on screen. In 2017 Haddish's role in the film ***Girls Trip*** makes her a star. The book covers what follows: a Netflix stand-up special, presenting at the Oscars, hosting *Saturday Night Live*, which earned her an Emmy, and hosting episodes of Shark Week. She describes the excitement and the strangeness of fame, from red carpets to meeting people she had idolized. She also writes about life on film sets and about the crew members who do the unseen work, whom she treats as part of her team. She also writes about the pressure that comes with success: the demands on her time, the people who want something from her and the online criticism. Fame does not erase the insecurity she learned as a child. She says she still has to remind herself that she deserves to be where she is. ### Her father The emotional center of the book is her **father**. He is a refugee from **Eritrea**. He leaves the family when she is very young, and she grows up without knowing him. As a teenager and young adult she searches for him. When she is 27, she finds him. She describes their first phone call, which leaves her crying in her kitchen. The reunion is not simple. Her father is flawed, and she has to decide what kind of relationship she can have with a man who left. But she also finds love and a connection to her Eritrean roots. They have about ten years together before he dies. In 2018 she travels to Eritrea to bury him and to see the place her family came from. The next year she becomes an Eritrean citizen. She writes about grief and about the comfort of finding the parent she had always wondered about. ### Sex, relationships and self-worth Haddish writes frankly and often about **sex** and relationships. She jokes about her preferences in men and repeats her grandmother's blunt advice on keeping a partner happy. She describes side effects from an antidepressant she took in her twenties. These chapters are crude and funny, and some readers find them the most memorable part of the book while others find them repetitive. Under the jokes, she writes about deeper things: miscarriages, the effect her mother's abuse had on how she chooses partners, and her slow work on her own self-esteem. She describes therapy and reflection as part of how she learned to stop chasing approval. ### South Central and the wider world The later essays turn outward. She writes about her old neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles and her wish to give back to it. She writes about racial profiling and about friends and family members lost to violence and police injustice. Essays reflect on the murder of George Floyd and on the January 6 attack on the Capitol. She also writes about shaving her head, which she treats as a fresh start. She ends with advice drawn from her life. Choose how you respond to fear. Do not let other people's cruelty decide your mood. Look for joy even in bad times. She presents her own life as proof that a person can survive abuse, poverty and grief and still laugh. ### What the critics say Reviewers describe the book as frank, funny and heartfelt, with the story of her father as its strongest part. Some readers find the sexual humor excessive or repetitive, and some say the book reads more like a stand-up set than a fully developed memoir, with uneven pacing. Many say the audiobook, in her own voice, works better than the print edition. ### Who should read it Read it if you enjoyed *The Last Black Unicorn* or Haddish's stand-up and want to know what came after. It also suits readers interested in how humor helps people survive trauma, as long as they are comfortable with crude jokes and frank talk about sex. ## Do this week - The next time someone criticizes you unfairly, write down one thing that brought you joy that day instead of replying. - Tell one trusted person about something you have been ashamed of, and notice how it feels afterward. - Write a list of three hard moments in your life and one thing each of them taught you. - Reach out this week to a relative you have lost touch with, even with a short message. - Find one way to give an hour or a small donation to the neighborhood or school where you grew up. Summary by The Gist Hub (https://thegisthub.com). In our own words, not the book's text.