Sure, I'll Join Your Cult A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

by Bamford, Maria

• ISBN13: 9781982168568
• ISBN10: 1982168560
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781982168582
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-09-05
• Publisher: Gallery Books
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Summary

From “weird, scary, ingenious” (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, an instant New York Times bestselling, brutally honest, and “laugh-out-loud funny” (Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems—from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.

In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cultbrings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited to: Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.

Packed with “Bamford’s brilliance, relentless humor, and insatiable instinct for survival (Library Journal), this memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it. In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following).

Author Biography

Maria Bamford, winner of the Best Club Comic at the American Comedy Awards and Breakout Comedy Star at the Montreal Comedy Festival, is the critically acclaimed star of The Maria Bamford Show, Ask My Mom, and her Netflix series Lady Dynamite. Maria’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, LA Weekly, and The Onion. Maria has contributed comedic voice overs for such animations as Netflix’s Big Mouth and BoJack Horseman, Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time, PBS’s Emmy-winning series Word Girl, Nickelodeon’s Kung Fu Panda and Legend of Korra, and the international hit Talking Tom and Friends. She can do about eleven voices, not including her own, but just a little higher and faster. For her mental health advocacy, she’s been presented with The OCD Foundation’s Illumination Award and featured at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, The Chautauqua Institution, and the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy and Ethics Symposium. She’s not always right for these rooms, but she’s on time and pleasant. (From MARIA: This was all in the third person, though I wrote it myself, which is slightly creepy. My apologies. If you need help, dial 911. I know. Healthcare can be super shitty. Go get yourself that shitty-ass help! I love you and think you deserve it.)