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Informationen zum Autor Sarah Cooper Klappentext "A painfully revealing and hilariously honest debut memoir that chronicles Sarah Cooper's rise from lip-synching in church to lip-synching to the president of the United States. As the youngest of four in a tight-knit Jamaican family, Cooper cut her teeth in the mean cornfields of suburban Maryland. Soon she became a charmingly neurotic woman trying to break her worst patterns and reclaim her linen closet. From an early obsession with hair bands to her struggle to escape the immigrant-to-basic-bitch pipeline to her use of the Internet as a marriage counselor after being fired by two real ones and the curse of her TED Talk vibe, Cooper invites us to share in her triumphs and humiliations as she tries (and fails) to balance her own dreams with the American dream. With determination and wit, Cooper mines a lifetime of oppressive perfectionism for your laughter and enjoyment, as she moves from tech to comedy, marriage to divorce, smart to foolish, while proving once and for all that being foolish is actually the smartest thing you can do"-- Leseprobe Jamaicans Go to Disneyland, or World, or Whatever When i was nine, my parents took us on a road trip to go to Disneyland in Orlando, Florida. Or is that Disney World? Whatever. The point is, I have no idea why we went on this trip. I consider this mystery to be my own personal rosebud, even though that metaphor makes no sense. It was August 1987. Seven years after we moved from Runaway Bay, Jamaica, to Rockville, Maryland—two places that are as different as they sound. We set off from Rockville in our moderately sized silver Volvo station wagon. It was a tight squeeze, three kids in the back seat and one in the way back with the cooler and our luggage. It was a real no-man’s-land back there with the cooler, so George, Charmaine, Rachael, and I traded off. The four of us lived for fast-food stops. But my dad lived for getting wherever we were going as quickly as possible and using that as a conversation starter whenever we got to wherever we were going. My father was 44 at the time, which is one year younger than I am now. And I don’t have a family of six. I am single and live alone and just got back from Trader Joe’s, where I procured some frozen fish sticks for dinner. “We made good time,” my dad would say very seriously to whomever. “I calculated three hours but it only took two hours and fifty-eight minutes.” A sort of Harry Belafonte meets Bill Nye the Science Guy, my dad was well into his 17-year career as a safety engineer for the Washington Metro. On this trip he was relying on a state-of-the-art navigation system called My Mom and a Paper Map. My mom’s 37-year-old eyes were glued to the road. Along with being the navigation system, she was second-in-command and keeper of the peace. George was 17 and would be off to the Navy soon. And he was very skinny. And very cool. He’d say things like GOOOOOOD NIGHT! Like that guy did on Good Times . I always wanted to impress my brother. He’d give me a high five and it would hurt so bad but I’d pretend it didn’t. This created a real fear of high fives in me that lives on to this day. Charmaine was 15. Rachael was 11. And I was 9. You could say we were a handful but we were never loud, because Daddy needed to concentrate. We did NOT want to miss an exit. There would be nothing worse than missing an exit. If that happened, my dad would lose his temper and curse up a storm. The car would get anxious and quiet. But as soon as the problem was solved, he was whistling again. I’d still feel anxious for a while, though, even as he whistled. I think that’s why I hate whistling. Here’s a secret: My dad is the reason I have no idea why we went on this trip. He wasn’t a fan of fun or leisure in general. If we were watching TV, he didn’t sit down and watch it with us. He’d stand in the doorway, with his arms folded...
