After a string of lack luster reads I treated myself to Tiffany Haddish’s The Last Black Unicorn from Audible since it’s been getting great reviews and who doesn’t love Tiffany Haddish?
I discovered Tiffany Haddish when Pajiba (or maybe it was Celebitchy) posted her interview with Jimmy Kimmel about taking the Fresh Prince of Bel Air on a Louisiana swamp tour. I didn’t see Girl’s Trip in theaters, my husband and I usually only see “blow-em up” movies on the big screen, but I recently saw it and Haddish really does steal the show. I am so glad she is having her moment because after hearing her life story this girl deserves everything good that is coming her way.
When Tiffany was a kid her mother was in a car accident that triggered her schizophrenia which made her incapable of properly caring for her children. Tiffany was in foster care for about a year before her grandmother got custody of Tiffany and her siblings. However her grandmother kept the kids in the system so she’d be paid for raising them and when Tiffany turned 18 her grandmother kicked her out because she was no longer getting money for her. While in high school Tiffany started performing stand up comedy as well as being a hype woman for Bat Mitzvahs but she had to stop her blossoming stand up career to get a more stable job to support herself. It broke my heart that even now her big motivation for making it big is to be able to afford a duplex so she can move her mother and a full time nurse in with her.
Tiffany doesn’t have a great track record with romance; she admits that she is drawn to possessive guys because she equates their obsessive attention with love. Her father disappeared when she was a kid and her step father was terrible to Tiffany and constantly cheated on her mother (he may have actually caused the accident that injured her mother) so she doesn’t have a great foundation for romantic relationships. While Tiffany finds the humor in most of her life experiences her story about her abusive ex-husband is nothing to laugh at and it is so brave of her to share her story.
Tiffany is raunchy and real; I also can’t believe she is 37- girl looks GOOD. Before she made it big she worked at an airline and also briefly pimped out the girl her boyfriend cheated on her with (it is funnier than it sounds). She has worked her way up in a male dominated business and kept her sense of humor as well as her dignity. Now she has Jada Pinkett Smith giving her advice on how to look the part of a successful actress on social media by having the right clothes and accessories. Everyone wants a piece of Haddish and I hope she has a long, successful career.
I really recommend the audio version of The Last Black Unicorn because Haddish’s delivery is amazing. It’s basically 5 hours of stand up.