Hot Seat

In her new memoir, discomfort queen Ziwe gets personal.

"How many Black friends do you have?" It's the question that launched Ziwe—the mononymous comedian, late-night television host, and interview provocateur— onto the national stage. While she made a name for herself as the question asker, Ziwe is full of answers in her debut essay collection, Black Friend.

"I don't love sharing anything about me, and I didn't want it to be personal," Ziwe tells me. "But obviously, you really can't hide behind 200 pages. So you're forced to reveal parts of yourself and be vulnerable. That was a hard pill for me to swallow."

The self-exposure paid off. In Black Friend, she plumbs the depths of her own experience to deliver thought-provoking essays about topics as salient as affirmative action, as scary as getting harassed by a stranger in the woods, and as silly as wikiFeet: "lam not a supporting character," she writes. "lam the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story." The result? An absolutely iconic book.

CHRIS MURPHY