The Ugly Cry

- Blurb -

An uproarious, moving memoir about a grandmother' s ferocious love and redefining what it means to be family"Painfully good. I loved it. " --Jenny Lawson, bestselling author of Furiously HappyThe Ugly Cry is the funniest memoir I have ever read. It is also achingly sad. And powerfully redemptive. --Augusten Burroughs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors "If you fight that motherf**ker and you don' t win, you' re going to come home and fight me. " Not the advice you' d normally expect from your grandmother--but Danielle Henderson would be the first to tell you her childhood was anything but conventional. Abandoned at ten years old by a mother who chose her drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend, Danielle was raised by grandparents who thought their child-rearing days had ended in the 1960s. She grew up Black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York, which created its own identity crises. Under the eye-rolling, foul-mouthed, loving tutelage of her uncompromising grandmother--and the horror movies she obsessively watched--Danielle grew into a tall, awkward, Sassy-loving teenager who wore black eyeliner as lipstick and was struggling with the aftermath of her mother' s choices. But she also learned that she had the strength and smarts to save herself, her grandmother gifting her a faith in her own capabilities that the world would not have most Black girls possess. With humor, wit, and deep insight, Danielle shares how she grew up and grew wise--and the lessons she' s carried from those days to these. In the process, she upends our conventional understanding of family and redefines its boundaries to include the millions of people who share her story.