The Last Black Unicorn — Mercyful World

This week is all about Tiffany Haddish. It’s only right. It seems last year was the Tiffany Haddish year, which led to her book naturally being the first book club read this year. The Last Black Unicorn is just as captivating as Haddish, herself, showed to be in 2017.

I’ll try not to say much, so I don’t ruin it for those who haven’t read it. I’ll just say that I enjoyed the book very much. It’s an easy (quick) read. You hear Haddish’s voice throughout the entire book. There are moments when you will literally laugh out loud (I dare you not to!) and there are moments when you will try to hold back tears. I highly recommend it.

To summarize my experience reading the book I’ll say that when I finished the last page and closed the book, I felt sad. Literally. She has a tough story and I felt sad for her. I shared my sentiments with my best friend Mahogany, and she said to me, “yeah, but she made it! She’s successful!” I responded to her, “yeah, she is, but she must be scarred for life. The things she went through will affect her forever. That’s crazy.”

I’m not sure what it was. We all go through many obstacles in our lives and we all have our own demons because of them. None of us are perfect, but I felt sad at the end of reading the book. That’s the most fitting word I can use: sad.

I won’t say much more, I’ll just leave you with several lines from the book that touched me.

(DISCLAIMER!! Quotes may ruin your reading experience if you haven’t read the book yet and would like to. Proceed at your own risk!)

“I had gotten accepted into NYU, but they weren’t paying my way…I was basically couch surfing then. I was just going to all my friends’ houses. Homeless as hell, just traveling around with my plastic bins. The ones with wheels on them and stuff…I was eighteen.” - Haddish, p.34

“They would make excuses for her, but they didn’t need to, ‘cause I loved her. As bad as she was to me, I still couldn’t help but love her.” - Haddish, p.41

“I don’t know. I just know that I was crying all day after he left. I was crying all day, because I just felt like that abandoned three-year-old girl again. I felt horrible.” - Haddish, p. 63

“I felt terrible, I felt like I was going to go to hell for this. But you know what? I’d rather go to hell and die without a baby on Earth, suffering, than have a baby here on Earth that suffered. That ain’t right.” - Haddish, p.81

“GRANDMA: Every man is going to think of you as property. That’s why they want to put they last name on your name…So you want to make sure whoever you end up with knows how to maintain their property. See yourself as a house…on the highest part of the hill…TIFANY: Ain’t that some fucked up shit to say to a little girl? Especially a poor girl, who was in and out of foster care? The reality is, for all of my twenties, I thought of myself as an apartment in the projects.” - Haddish, p.158-9