How to Make White People Laugh

by Negin Farsad

  I refuse to believe that you’re not a part of what’s going to make this country better. I mean, come on! You!? You’re a handsome devil, a smooth and stylish heartbreaker. How could you doubt your place in changing the world? I’m charmed by the very thought of you. Because you’re human.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is a ridiculous privilege. That said, oh my god it’s also soooo hard! Did you know? It’s like really, really hard. I’m not gonna lie, I had a couple of moments that could best be described as The Shining. As in, I was talking to a character portrayed by my index finger. But to keep me sane and to make this entire enterprise possible, I amassed a veritable army of smart people who helped me… constantly. And I shall acknowledge them here, as this is the acknowledgment section.

  First off, I always dreamt of writing a book but I didn’t dare utter such an absurdly highfalutin’ thought out loud until the inimitable, upstanding and charming Daniel Kirschen from ICM looked me straight in the eyeballs and said “You have a book in you.” Oh Dan! You were right and you were the OG of this entire book writing venture. THANK YOU, dude. My editor, Libby Burton, gave this book its legs. She had a spidey-sense for everything I was trying to say and sometimes couldn’t. She talked me down ledges, or up trees or into creeks, wherever the writing was good, she talked me into that. She is, as the kids say, totally dope. I also have to thank the lovely Sarah Weiss who saw the seedlings of a book and took a chance. Josh Sandler is a dude who gets it, who always has my back, and kicks some legal ass!

  “I really have to thank the super cool Monica Johnson whose sure-handed artfulness made the wonderful illustrations in this book. And of course, my delightful long-time colleague and pay Shaddei May Guillaume for her astounding abilities in the world of fake graph generation.”

  I gotta thank the many many friends who looked at these pages and gave me notes. I aspire to be as sharp and insightful as Jeff Caltabiano, Lara Nahas, and Daria Vaisman. Geoff Kirsch is the kind of guy you meet in a college sketch comedy troupe and then hold on to for the rest of your life because brilliant writers are hard to come by! Thanks to Laurel Brightman because who wouldn’t want to get notes from a bestselling writer who also wears cute skirts?? Claudia Cogan has an eye for jokes because she is a comedian among mere stand-ups. Rachel Young is one of those cross genre note-givers that I’ve bothered for nearly every project because her critical thinking skills are like woah. Mindy Raf doles out her wisdom with a side of gluten free cupcakes and a metric ton of punch lines. Andrew Mendelson, Lee Camp, and Dean Obeidallah have fought the good fight with me so many times (many of which are described in these pages) because they’re better citizens than the rest of us.

  Big ups to Andrew Solomon—he told me I should write this thing at a writer’s retreat and then made it happen. Jason Reich also made it happen because he cares and he’s funny and sometimes we write movies together. Justin Krebs didn’t want to see me languish, nuh huh! And despite having the fullest of heavy plates, he has always made time. Christine Coulson at The Met gave me the stage time to work out the ideas—she runs shit with stilettos on because she embodies cool. And special thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for supplying so many images and making them available to the public.

  I have to throw a big warm hug, complete with a blanket and those warming packs that people put in their coat pockets, to the entire TEDFellows team. You really don’t know what a fellowship means, what genuine institutional support feels like, until you meet people like Tom Reilly, Chris Anderson, Shoham Arad, Patrick D’arcy, Samantha Kelly, Katrina Conanan, and the many others at TED.

  Places! Oh places, you were so great in giving me a desk, a view, and some external noise: Yaddo was perhaps the most gorgeous place I’ve ever written anything while also being extremely well fed. Bryant Park has outlets, people, it has outlets because NYC has still got it! Café Orlin, Spiegal, and the Housing Works Project Bookstore gave me a comfy spot and some hot people to look at when I was thinking.

  Kasumi Parker showed me that you could write a book and not fall apart. People like Anca Caliman, Kiran Jain, Arvind Jayaram, Leonard De La Cruz, Steven Synstelien, Mike Dawsen, and Jake Wolff gave me the moments that make a life. Jason Tottenham has been there to pick up the pieces or dance or sing or order pizza or sit quietly and always with love. To my brother and my parents, to whom I already dedicated this book, I wish for your sake I had gone into one of the two acceptable Iranian careers (doctor or engineer) but I thank you so, so much for letting me be a comedian and then building an unbreakable support system around that crazy decision. When I think of you, I know that the American dream is alive and well. Now let’s eat some pie.

  About the Author

  NEGIN FARSAD is an American comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker of Iranian descent based in New York City. Like most comedians, she has a Master’s Degree in African-American Studies. She was named one of the 53 Funniest Women by the Huffington Post, one of 10 Feminist Comedians to Watch by Paper Magazine, and was selected as a TEDFellow for her work in social justice comedy. She has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon, and others. She is director/producer of the feature films Nerdcore Rising starring Weird Al Yankovic and The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross, and Lewis Black (both available on Netflix). Her next film 3rd Street Blackout, starring Janeane Garofalo and Ed Weeks will be released in 2016.

  Reading Group Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  1. What did the title of this book lead you to expect as a reader?

  2. Have you ever felt as if you were a part of a culture or ethnicity outside of your own?

  3. Would you ever fight on behalf of a group you didn’t belong to? If so, how and why?

  4. How does Farsad’s identity change over the span of this book?

  5. Has HOW TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE LAUGH changed your opinion on comedy, how it operates, and its power? If so, how?

  6. Looking at Farsad’s struggle with her identity as an adolescent and young adult, what is gained and what is lost by glossing over one’s real identity and opting to become part of an easier or more straightforward group?

  7. What personal myths of yours did Farsad dispel regarding Iranian culture and Islam?

  8. Can you think of a time when you became aware of your lack of exposure to other realities and lifestyles aside from your own?

  9. Do you agree with Farsad’s statement: “If you’re white, screw white guilt… Guilt is worthless”?

  10. Has this book inspired you to act against social injustice in your own life? If so, how?

  Q&A with Negin Farsad

  1. Was there a specific event that triggered your need to write this book?

  I wouldn’t call it a specific event—figuring out who you are and your role in the greater social and cultural landscape is one of those slow burn things. I found myself in the middle of a Masters in African-American Studies before I even questioned why an Iranian-American Muslim like me would even be in African-American Studies. Basically, I made a lot of choices without quite knowing what was guiding those choices. That’s true not only for my identity issues but also that ill-advised bell-bottom phase I went through. Once college is a couple of years behind you, you start having a rearview mirror. For me, that mirror slowly got crowded with opinions, wars, bigotry, feelings, empty pints of ice cream, refugees, tears, a pair of unused roller blades, joy, jokes, Iranian nuclear accords, hate crimes, more jokes… and when I saw enough stuff, that’s when I realized that I could write a book. Do they call that growing up? Maybe.

  2. Where did you get your sense of humor from? Who are other comedians that inspire you and inform your style of stand-up?

  Some of my earliest memories are watching my mother and her five sisters sitting around and chatting. They were rarely in the same country at the same time, but when they were, it was pure hilarious bliss. It was like a really good episode of Friends, except for they were Iranian, they had a li
ttle less agency in their love lives, and they never worked at a coffee shop. But they would joke about anything from romance to politics to bowel movements. They did impressions, had perfect comedic timing and… now that I’m talking about it I need to figure out how to get those sisters their own show. I would sit and listen to them for hours and it’s quite possible that I’m a comedian and it’s my mother’s fault.

  One of my earliest movie memories is watching Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton in the movie 9 to 5. It was on TV (was it the sitcom version? My memory sucks) and I don’t think I was supposed to be watching as a 4 year old or whatever I was, I didn’t quite understand the workaday struggles of the women involved (my workaday struggles mostly involved tracking a favored binky). Even though I didn’t get the jokes, I just knew that they were funny. As a kid after school I would always stop channel surfing when I found an episode of I Love Lucy. Come to think of it, I guess I loved to see women being funny.

  As an adult, like any red-blooded American, I want to bottle a little bit of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Louis CK, and Margaret Cho. I love comics like Paul F. Tompkins and Eugene Murman, Dmitri Martin and Mike Birbiglia. But because I’m around a lot of standup comedians, I get to see a ridiculous range of emerging talent, you should know them: Kendra Cunningham, Becky Yamamoto, Rojo Perez, Claudia Kogan, Lee Camp, John F. O’Donnell, Katina Corrao and I’ll stop before the list gets embarrassingly long.

  3. Had 9/11 never taken place and triggered Islamophobia in America, do you think you’d still be a comic today?

  Oh yes. I think my comedy is a reaction to social ills and we had those before 9/11. We also had Islamophobia before 9/11, we just called it regular “bigotry”—maybe it’s nice that we have a “special” label for it now. I use the term “nice” loosely. In the 1980s we hated Iranians because of their revolution and the Iran hostage crisis and the Iran Contra affair. It’s hard to remember the 1980s because of all the shoulder pads.

  4. Much of HOW TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE LAUGH educates the reader on Iranian culture and the religion of Islam, in order to dispel stereotypes. How do you respond to the belief that many people of color hold that it is not their job to educate their white counterparts?

  I think you’ll walk away from this book feeling like you learned a few things about Iran or Islam but that you probably learned a lot more about the experience of being a first generation Iranian-American living in the United States. I don’t claim to know everything or even that much about Iran—that history is ridiculously long, it’s a hard nut to crack. And I will never claim to be any authority on Islam. But I do hope that this book, in some small, small way, helps people think about the experience of others. After all, we are all in a community with the others. I want to dispel stereotypes, but I also want to build commonalities.

  It’s true that some people of color do not believe it’s their job to educate people. They’re right, it is not their job. But I have made it mine. I also think that people of color have to put themselves in the shoes of a white American who may be from a homogenous part of the country and who may have no exposure to other cultures. Are we going to blame that person? Or help them out? I think we should help them out. But trust me, I get it, its exhausting being the dispeller, the “educator,” the gentle explainer. Because we got shit to do! This laundry isn’t gonna do itself! Though if you do take on the burden, it will pay dividends. Things do change and you become a critical part of that change.

  5. The term “Third Thing” and the concept of a hyphenated identity are at the heart of your book. How do you think Americans can go about creating space for these hyphenated identities in our society?

  I think a good example of this is the #OscarsSoWhite phenomenon or the SNL story a couple years back. In both cases, the issue was first presented as “the Oscars suck this year because they’re aren’t any African-American nominees.” Or, “SNL needs a black woman.” That’s definitely true but that neglects all of Third Thing America. So when we have our knee jerk reactions to these cultural phenomena, we should try to be more inclusive. Because, at the end of the day, the Oscars also has an alarmingly low number of Filipino-American actors, right? And SNL needs more Pakistanis. Our reaction tends to live on the black-white binary but America is just so much more than that. That said, Filipino-Americans (or name your group here) also have to realize that black issues are their issues. Bigotry lives on a slippery slope or, like, a slippery slide in one of those water parks that I was embarrassed to go to as a child because I didn’t want to be seen in a bathing suit.

  6. More than once you voice your frustration with minorities holding prejudices against one another—essentially distancing themselves from other people of color. How do you think minorities can go about bridging this gap and finding common ground in their experiences as the American “other”?

  We all have a responsibility to meet our neighbors. Because it’s hard to hate someone you know. That goes for everybody. Besides, you could meet your neighbor, find out that they make the world’s best, I don’t know, jerk chicken, and then you might find gooey feelings in your loins and then you might find yourself asking for their jerk chicken all the time and then you might end up smooching and then, LOVE! And then, BABIES! What I’m saying is, meet other people of color because it helps to build community and bridge the gap but also because you might get laid.

  7. HOW TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE LAUGH takes an honest look at some of the more embarrassing moments of your youth. Was writing this book traumatic or cathartic? What do you hope your audience will take away from your personal anecdotes?

  Hmmm… Cathartic or traumatic? Writing some of that stuff was a bit traumatic. I know for some people high school was popularity and bubble gum but for most people, it was TOUGH, right? Everyone must have a high school story that still leaves them sobbing in the tub 15 years later. I think getting those out was good for me—it’s as if I kept some of those stories carefully preserved in bubble wrap for years and I finally opened them up only to find that I’m an adult now and, as Marie Kondo would say, “this item sparks no joy, throw it out.”

  8. What was the process of writing HOW TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE LAUGH like? How was it different from writing stand-up?

  When you’re writing a book you spend a lot of time in your head—too much time, too too much time in your head—and I think that was the most frustrating part of the process. I’m an extrovert, I like testing out my bits at brunch and then going on stage that night and trying them out for a larger audience. A book is the opposite of “being with people.” Standup has a lot of highs and lows—you write a bit at home, you’re unsure about it, you go on stage, you test it out, it does really well, you’re elated! (or it does really poorly and you’re gutted). The timeline is condensed, you don’t spend very much time not knowing how an audience will respond to your jokes. But book writing is NUTS because I’ll basically never know what the audience thinks! I’ll never know if you’re laughing because you’re probably wearing your footy pajamas and reading my book alone on your lazy boy and you’re not inviting me over! It’s weird because with book writing, you just have to trust, and let it go.

  The other major difference is that you should always keep a box of Kleenex within tear-spurting distance when you’re writing a book. With stand-up, there’s far less Kleenex usage. Though, I do recognize that it’s ridiculous to cry when you have the obscene first-world privilege of writing a book. What can I say, my tear ducts aren’t reasonable.

  9. Who inspired you to believe that you can change the world? Where does that confidence come from?

  When you see your parents immigrate, leave their families, change countries and languages with a child in tow and no understanding of what awaits them, with no support system and no money—when you see your parents work against the odds and then finally succeed it just seems like… anything is possible.

  1 And just to be clear, I was never “Dolezaling”—I was never trying to pass or pretend or mask—it was never l
ike that.

  2 Two masters degrees is a must-have for any comedian.

  3 Come on! Obama is not Muslim.… Probably. He isn’t. No really. I’m almost sure he isn’t.*

  * Oh yeah, footnotes—it’s that kind of book.

  4 An image from the Metropolitan Museum archives by some famous artist.

  5 The “she” in this case is “me,” because that’s a picture of me. As I write this, I am also making fart noises with my face.

  6 This isn’t true, but it’s one of those things that could almost be true because it was the 1800s, and at that time in France they beheaded people for the most hilarious reasons. Just before that, in the late 1700s the guillotine was so popular that it was made into a child’s toy so that kids could decapitate their dolls. I know, so cute.

  7 Hell yeah, I can reference a really old movie from the canon of cinema. I went to college!

  8 Although you can write a book about them, or at least devote part of a chapter to them.

  9 Monica and Ross.

  10 Joey.

  11 Chandler.

  12 Phoebe.

  13 You’re right, maybe I will, if the ’90s look comes back in vogue.

  1 There was a time in our nation’s history where President’s Day Weekend, not Spring Break, was the undisputed weekend for youthful debauchery, as commemorated by Beverly Hills 90210, a prestige drama from the ’90s that many believe inspired Breaking Bad.

  2 Me and my parents plus this one other family of 5: 3+5=8. “Show the proof,” they say. And she did.

  3 Grad-school speak.

  4 Come on, that’s not her real name. What do I wanna do, get sued?

  5 That explains the old adage, “You’ve never seen good tetherball till you’ve urinated yourself.”