The Last Black Unicorn

by Tiffany Haddish

You know—black women, we got complicated hair. If you do it right, it’s beautiful. But if you don’t, it looks like some crow’s nest.

poor as fuck chic”—

I was in ninth grade, and straight up I could not read or write.

I was in AP classes (where you can get college credit in high school), while not being able to read!

Now, it seems crazy that I could not read or write. My memory was really good, so it didn’t make no sense. I just couldn’t read. You know what it was? I just didn’t believe I could. I thought I was stupid.

I was basically the Flava Flav of Bar Mitzvahs.

I did over five hundred Bar Mitzvahs.

By the time I was nine, she got her motor skills back. She couldn’t get all her words out, so she’d just punch me. Just full on. Because of her, I can take a punch like nobody’s business.

I was in foster care from the time I was thirteen until I was eighteen.

I guess maybe we gotta update what we tell kids—that old men sucking your titties is also molestation.

When I was eighteen, she put me out. She wasn’t getting paid for me anymore, so she just put me out. I was just homeless.

“He’s ashamed of himself, because he left you when you were three, did nothing for you, and you ended up being very successful without him, and then you buy him stuff. You are not only a better person than he is, but you are kind and responsible where he is not, and you’re providing where he did not. Not just as his child, but as a woman, providing for him. Your goodness holds up a mirror to his ugliness, and that is too painful for him, so he has to project this onto you, by saying you make him feel less about himself. It’s nothing you did. It’s guilt.”

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.

It’s just not a lucrative business, selling dick. Dick ain’t really all that hard to come by.

“You act like you’re an ugly girl. You’re like an ugly girl inside of you, but a pretty girl on the outside. Did you know that?”

what I’m doing.” The reality is, in my life, no man’s ever really cared. As a kid, I didn’t have any man that cared about me.

“Every man is going to think of you as property. That’s why they want to put they last name on your name. Then you’re their property. So you want to make sure whoever you end up with knows how to maintain their property. See yourself as a house. You have to view yourself as the house on the highest part of the hill. You can’t let everybody come into your house. They can’t catch no bus to your house. They can’t ride no bike to your house. They got to have a nice car with four-wheel drive to get up to your house.”

“Don’t be telling people everything that you’re doing, because motherfuckers will try to make you fail. Just do your shit. You ain’t gotta tell everybody you got a movie. Just do the fucking movie, Tiffany. Like don’t tell people where you’re at, because they’re going to come for you. They’re going to come for you. Because people will be trying to do bad stuff. They think bad thoughts, and they jealous, and they will try to fuck you up.”

Because to me, if a man cares about you, he gives you money. He works hard for his money, so if he gives it to you, he cares.

A lot of women who suffer physical violence go through this. You get in a bad relationship, and you don’t—or you can’t—find your way out. It’s easy to talk about leaving him. It’s hard to do it. Part of you really thinks it will get better, and he said it would. Obviously, it didn’t get better.

Even though I got beat up. Even though the Jehovah’s Witnesses were telling me to get out. Even though a different pastor, from the Baptist Church, was also telling me to get out. It was like God was sending me all these messages to get the fuck out, but I still couldn’t.

On some level, I felt like if I loved him enough, I could heal him. I could heal him from being mad, from being so vicious.

When we black women repeat our words, you know shit is bad. Well, shit was bad.

“This is my Martin Luther King bag. The lock fell off, so it’s free at last. Get it?”

When you’re like ten and a foster kid, nobody wants you around, because they think you’re done. There’s no way you’re going to come out from that situation undamaged.

believe my purpose is to bring joy to people, to make them laugh, and to share my story to help them. To show people that no matter what, they matter, and they can succeed. No matter how bad things go, no matter how dark your life is, there is a reason for it. You can find beauty in it, and you can get better. I know, because I’ve done it. That’s why my comedy so often comes from my pain. In my life, and I hope in yours, I want us to grow roses out of the poop.

Tucker Max.

Book in a Box.