Ezra's Bookshelf

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway)

by Chelsea Devantez

Biography & MemoirMedia & Journalism

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Chelsea Devantez's 'I Shouldn't Be Telling You This (But I'm Going to Anyway)' is a memoir-in-essays about growing up in poverty and making it in comedy's boys' club. Devantez, an Emmy-nominated writer who has worked with Jon Stewart, structures each essay around a woman who shaped her, from her chaotic mother to the colleagues who became mentors and friends. She writes with comedic timing about serious subjects: poverty that meant not knowing if there would be food, domestic violence that was just part of life, the grinding work of proving herself in writers' rooms dominated by men. Devantez doesn't sentimentalize struggle or treat success as inevitable vindication; she's clear-eyed about luck's role and survivor's guilt's weight. Her voice is distinctively funny without using humor to deflect from genuine emotion, a balance that reflects her professional skills. The book also offers glimpses into the television industry, from the hierarchies of writers' rooms to the particular pressures facing women in comedy. Readers who enjoy personal essays will find a fresh voice wrestling with class, gender, family, and ambition in ways that illuminate both individual experience and broader social patterns.

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