From dubbing Michael Keaton an “Eyebrow Zaddy” to writing a treatise on barrister wigs “looking like a sad-ass Halloween costume and smelling like Seabiscuit’s haystack,” Phoebe Robinson is as hilarious as ever in her third book, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes, the first title from the comedian-podcaster-actor-host’s new Tiny Reparations Books imprint.

As in her previous memoirs-in-essay (You Can’t Touch My Hair and Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay), not only is the bestselling author’s work super funny, it’s also enlightening and thought-provoking. Whether she’s offering advice to aspiring bosses, dismantling the “patriarchal narrative [that] every woman . . . wants the same things” (especially motherhood) or explaining why the #ITakeResponsibility initiative in the summer of 2020 enrages her (“celebrities heard but did not listen to what Black people wanted and raced to put together something so shoddy and tone-deaf”), Robinson’s voice is sure and strong.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Phoebe Robinson shares what she hopes to accomplish as the publisher of Tiny Reparations Books.

Her essay “Black Girl, Will Travel” is particularly moving. She explains that, while her parents are team “#NoNewFriendsOrAcquaintancesOrWorldlyExperiences,” one of the benefits of her career is the ability to see more of the world. It can be “downright terrifying and life-threatening to travel while Black”—and the lack of movies, books, shows and ads featuring Black people abroad certainly makes it seem as if travel isn’t for Black people. But visiting unfamiliar places has changed her, and she urges readers to remember “evolving can’t always happen when we’re confined to our area code.”

In “4C Girl Living in Anything but a 4C World: The Disrespect,” Robinson describes a journey of a different kind: Her own rocky path to feeling at home in and with her hair. She examines the historical and cultural influences that have shaped Black women’s feelings about their hair and details the racism, colorism and cruelty that persists to this day. It’s a memorable, meaningful reading experience dotted with hits of poetry, anger and revelation—as is Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes as a whole. So slip into your inside cardigan (a la Mr. Rogers) and settle in for another rollicking and resonant Robinson read.

Casey Wilson’s The Wreckage of My Presence kicks off with an essay that zigzags from archly funny to matter-of-fact to poignant and back again, nicely setting the tone for the 20 essays that follow. In “Bed Person,” Wilson explains that she “wants to recline at all times,” whether in Pilates class, at parties or in a movie theater. She and her husband routinely eat dinner in bed, and baths are a regular part of her routine. “I am simply a person of comfort and excess,” Wilson writes, which she learned from her parents, an intelligent and eccentric duo prone to displaying big emotions in ways that made her feel humiliated or exhilarated, sometimes simultaneously.

It was devastating when Wilson’s beloved mother died suddenly at 54, not least of all because her passing came at a time of great professional and personal change for Wilson, who’d just left “Saturday Night Live” and was newly cast in the show “Happy Endings.” Overwhelmed, she found solace in watching “The Real Housewives” of various cities. The reality TV franchise became an emotional and career-augmenting lifeline: Wilson's obsession helped her to reckon with her grief, and she now co-hosts the beloved Housewives podcast “Bitch Sesh.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Summer reading 2021: 9 books to soak in this season

Fans who want more deets about “Happy Endings” will enjoy Wilson’s behind-the-scenes tidbits about the show and its stars. She also provides a list of amusingly pointed don’ts in “People Don’t Know How to Act” (e.g., “don’t not know if you aren’t funny”), details her fascination with Scientology in “Flyentology” and shares a tear-jerkingly lovely Louie Anderson story in “Cool Girl.”

Throughout, Wilson is forthright about everything from her romantic regrets to her experiences with depression and anxiety. She’s successful in many arenas (screenwriting, comedy, movies, TV, podcasting) but views herself as a work in progress, whether as a mother of two, wife, colleague or friend. Her voice in The Wreckage of My Presence is funny and bold, occasionally manic or melancholy, and always hilarious and heartfelt. Fans will turn the last page wanting more.

“What is normal?” actor and author Rachel Bloom asks at the beginning of I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are, her riotous collection of essays.

The creator and star of the hit TV show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" tackles this question from every angle. To begin, she examines growing up in Southern California as “a pale kid with transition-lensed glasses and a rolling backpack” who desperately wanted to be one of the popular kids. The only child of loving, if slightly overprotective, parents, Bloom struggled with feeling like a misfit and was later diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: We chatted with Rachel Bloom about theater, mental health and the difference between writing a book and writing for TV.

She eventually found her place in the theater, where she discovered that “being a theater kid was an easy explanation for the reason I didn’t fit in. It meant that I was a cultured and misunderstood eccentric whose interests made me wise beyond my years.” Bloom studied theater at New York University and spent years working her way up in the industry. A viral video—the name of which isn’t fit for print here, but look it up, it’s hilarious—opened a window of opportunity, and Bloom was contacted by a screenwriter about creating a musical TV show.

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is a uniquely fun read in part because of the way that Bloom frequently switches formats. One chapter is a screenplay about why she loves theater, while another is a poem apologizing to all her former roommates for being terrible to live with, and she sprinkles excerpts from her real childhood diaries throughout. In addition to the laugh-out-loud portions, Bloom is brutally honest about her shortcomings, self-aware about her quirky approach to life and candid about the years of therapy that have helped her live with OCD.

The conclusion Bloom reaches, of course, is that there's really no such thing as normal. Perhaps even more to the point—who wants to be normal when you could live life as loudly and fully as Rachel Bloom?

A wise rap group from Staten Island once delivered a succinct definition of post-Reaganomics economic theory: “Cash rules everything around me.” For many millennials, student loan debt is a source of shame, anger and disappointment—a false bill of goods created by a broken system using the manipulation tactics of a seasoned multilevel marketing company. According to Forbes, student loan debt in 2020 shows no signs of slowing down; there’s a reported “45 million borrowers who collectively owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S.” Echoing the sentiments of many people in author Michael Arceneaux’s age group, I Don’t Want to Die Poor is a candid study of the hydra-like power of student loan debt and, as a result, the rising cost of freedom.

Arceneaux, a 2007 Howard University grad, is not looking for pity. Rather, this collection argues that what is truly pitiful is the state of our country’s education system, wherein higher learning, like health insurance and its associated medical expenses, can sentence already disadvantaged people to further hardship. In terms of Arceneaux’s own student loan debt, the book is a reminder that privilege always grants access to opportunity. Essays cover the pitfalls of the gig economy; the crushing impact of debt on mental, emotional and physical health; living up to cultural, societal, familial and personal expectations; the crutch of self-serving coping mechanisms; and capitalism’s ability to commodify the basic need for human connection.

Arceneaux is as entertaining as he is insightful. While pop culture references come fast and furious (the Real Housewives franchise, “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,” Carrie Bradshaw, various R&B starlets and 90s chanteuses, vernacular and slang familiar to habitual browsers of Black Twitter, etc.), they don’t distract or take away from the overall narrative themes. In less skilled hands, the humor could feel forced and repetitious. However, Arceneaux found his voice online, having carved out a space where both vulnerability and nuanced critical thinking work together to reflect on the contradictions of our world. His voice is as familiar as that ride or die friend who isn’t afraid of your mistakes and has stuck around without judgment.

In the essay “Shrinkage,” Arceneaux writes, “You have to be able to afford choice. Happiness is expensive.” What do we lose when we let fear rule our life—the fear inspired by money and the lack thereof, the nightmarish anxiety induced by failing to conquer capitalism’s twisted labyrinth? We dehumanize ourselves. We begin to believe that our worth is dependent upon our gross net, that our value is determined by how far our money can go. Arceneaux’s essays are a reminder that debt (particularly for the generation of young people who graduated on the heels of the 2008 recession) is not indicative of one’s character. As he advises in the title essay, “Learn to forgive yourself.” Student loan debt is not a death sentence but an indictment of broken systems and the unjust, corrupt institutions that keep them alive.

The ability to write 240 witty characters on social media does not necessarily translate to being someone whose books you want to read. But that’s what happened with Samantha Irby, whom I first knew as the person consistently killing it on Twitter, making me laugh out loud with her tweets on “Judge Mathis” and “Succession.” (She’s obsessed with both.)

It was later that I realized she also writes stunningly astute, hilarious essays about topics both serious (becoming a stepmother) and less so (her slightly lazy beauty rituals). But like all the best essayists, Irby brings deeper insights to even her most lighthearted work.

In “Girls Gone Mild,” Irby reflects on her extreme reluctance to go out, now that she’s rounding the corner to 40: “Remember when you could be roused from a night being spent on the couch in your pajamas, curled around a pint of Chubby Hubby, and goaded into joining your friends at the bar even though you’d already taken off your bra? Yeah, I can’t either, but I know those days existed. I have the liver damage to prove it.” By the end of the essay, Irby has made peace with her new slower pace of life. It’s simultaneously funny and poignant, as are all the entries in this unflinching collection. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Samantha Irby discusses moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan, working in Hollywood and writing her newest book, Wow, No Thank You.

Perhaps the most powerful is “Body Negativity,” in which Irby catalogs the many ways women are expected to perform upkeep on our appearances so we have glowing skin, flowing eyelashes, smooth foreheads and snow-white teeth. But guess what? Irby has discovered that, unless it makes you feel good, none of that really matters: “I have threaded, I have microbladed, I have trimmed, I have tinted, I have filled in, I have styled, I have contoured, and I have microfeathered my stupid eyebrows, and none of those things has ever had a discernible impact on my life. Now I do nothing, and it’s fine!”

Frankly, Irby’s radically honest writing in Wow, No Thank You. makes me feel better—or at least less bad—about myself. She gives a welcome voice to what so many women in 2020 are feeling: overleveraged, underappreciated, exhausted, bloated—but hopeful.