Gina Yashere, CACK-HANDED: A Memoir

[1:08]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Libby Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID-nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Gina Yashere is the author of Crack Hand It, a Memoir. Born and raised in London to Nigerian parents, she previously worked as an elevator engineer for Otis. Gina has been a stand up and TV star in The UK for numerous years now with appearances on iconic TV shows such as Live at the Apollo and Mock the Week, as well as creating and performing the hugely popular comedic characters Tanya and Mrs. Omo Karede on the Lenny Henry show. She broke onto the American comedy scene with her appearances on Last Comic Standing on NBC where she made it to the final 10 and then never went home. Gina went on to be named one of the top 10 rising talents in the Hollywood Reporter. She's also known in The US for being the only British comedian to ever appear on the iconic Def Comedy Jam as well as for her hilarious appearances on The Tonight Show and Crashing on HBO. Gina self produced three separate one hour stand up specials, skinny bitch, laughing to America, and ticking boxes, two of which are currently streaming on Netflix. Gina's fourth stand up special is also streaming on Netflix as part of the stand up season two and is garnering rave reviews on the network. She's regularly featured on Comedy Central as the British correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and is also an in demand voice artist. She has voiced characters in various animations, including Keisha in the British cult hit Bromwell High and Gravel in the latest movie from the makers of Wallace and Grommet and Chicken Run Early Man. She can currently be heard playing a starfish called Gareth on the children's ITV show, The Rubbish World of Dave Spud. Gina has performed for audiences not just in Europe, The US, and Australia, but she is in fact a highly sought after comedian in Asia, making numerous sold out appearances in Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. It's a wonder she found the time to pick up her fourth award in a row for best comedian at the recent Black Entertainment and Comedy Awards in The UK. Gina has performed numerous times the prestigious Just for Last Comedy Festival in Montreal and Toronto. Feature film appearances have included Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mr. In Between, and she has also appeared in the West End stage in the Vagina Monologues. Gina currently resides in Los Angeles where she is producing, writing and acting on the new sitcom Bob Hearts Abi Shola, which she created with Chuck Lorre and is currently airing on CBS. Welcome, Gina. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Cack Handed a Memoir.

[4:01]Gina Yashere: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course.

[4:05]Zibby Owens: Would you mind telling listeners a little bit about your memoir and why you even decided to write one?

[4:11]Gina Yashere: So the memoir is basically, it covers my first sort of the history of my parents. So it slightly covers the history of Nigeria, where my parents came from, and then their journey to England where they met, they had me. And then so it covers my the first sort of, I'm gonna say twenty five years of my life. Just growing up in London, England in the seventies, you know, being chased by skinheads, racism was super, you know, at the forefront of everything at the time. And my experience through school, you know, then becoming an engineer, I worked for Otis, who make elevators. I was preparing and building elevators as an engineer, I was their first woman engineer in their hundred year history in The UK. So my experiences on that job as a woman and a black woman on that, and you can just about imagine what that was like. And then my foray into comedy and my experiences in comedy. So basically, it's a humorous memoir, but it also covers pretty dark subjects as well, so it's a bit of both. And the the reason why the book is called Cat Handed is because I'm left handed, which is an old English word for left handed. And in many cultures, African culture, Indian, Middle Eastern, the left hand is the hand is the unclean hand. It's the hand that's supposed to be used to wipe your bum when you go for a poo. And kak, kaka is another word for poo, hence, cack handed. And also, it's a a metaphor for how my life and career has gone because that's you know, cack handed also means awkward and clumsy. I don't think we are awkward and clumsy. I just think it's because we live in a right handed world. If I'm next to you at a bar and I'm talking and I'm gesticulating with my left hand, I'm probably gonna knock over your drink because you put it on your dominant side, which is your right side. But because 90% of the world or whatever is right handed, we're the ones seen as awkward and clumsy. So that's the meaning the word. And so cat handed is kind of a metaphor for the route that my life has taken, my career. It's never been a straight line. I've to circumvent loads of obstacles, jump over obstacles, get under obstacles, dig around them. So that's why I called the book that. Wow.

[6:17]Zibby Owens: Excellent. I will never look at a left handed person the same way again, basically. Exactly.

[6:22]Gina Yashere: Yeah. You're reeducated.

[6:23]Zibby Owens: Yeah. You're, like, rebranding all the left handed people everywhere. Maybe not in such a positive light, I'll have you know, but that's okay. You know, one scene that really stood out to me was was when the girl in one of the classrooms leaned out of the window and started just saying racist, awful stuff to you. And you decided to just run right up there. The teacher turned a blind eye and just kind of, like, beat the living daylights out of this girl. I did. And then almost got arrested and had your life sort of, you know, take a completely different tack. And then you end up trying to sort of kill yourself and then having to pretend that you were unconscious even to the paramedics. Oh my gosh. Wait, tell me more about that whole situation.

[7:12]Gina Yashere: Well, you know, that incident was a culmination of years of abuse at school, years of being called names because my parents were African and very visibly African. My name was African. You know? It was years of abuse at school. I'd spent my years fighting people at school. You know? It was either fight or be bullied. And so I was one of those kids that I was like, well, I'm gonna be the crazy scrapper because that way I won't get bullied. So if anybody even said anything to me, I'd immediately launch myself myself at them. And then that stopped me being bullied because people go, oh, no. Don't mess with her. She's crazy. But they'd laugh at me and call me names behind my neck or whatever. But they were like, don't mess with her. She'll she'll attack you. She's crazy. And then as I got older, I switched that tactic and started switching more towards humor and using my humor to keep so so I was like, if people are laughing at me or at least laughing laughing, if I'm making them laugh, at least they're not abusing me. So I that's how I my humor developed. But, yeah, this was, like, the last pretty much the last day of school. I was doing my exams, and it was just before the summer holidays, summer vacations. And so I was feeling good. I was doing my exams. I wasn't in school uniform because to come in to do your exam, didn't have to wear the school uniform. So I picked out a cool outfit I put together, and I was I'd finished just on an exam. I know I passed it. I was feeling good. And I was walking through the program. I'm on my way home. And all the other the rest of the school was in class. You know, they were in class, and this girl just leaned out the window and just started screaming abuse at me. And I'm like, I'm here in my outfit that I spent hours picking out. I'm feeling good. I've passed my exams. I'm I'm feeling positive. I'm about to go into a new journey in my life, and this girl is just dragging me back to the gutter. And I kinda just lost my temper. And she'd been one of the, you know, the main proponents of the abuse over the years. So I was like, alright. I'm done. I'm not taking this anymore. And I went up into her classroom, and we got into a fight. But the fury that just I unleashed on her, she stood no chance. And the teacher and, yeah, she was in a maths class, I believe, at the time, and the teacher did nothing. I mean, he was I think he was Moroccan. He was an African teacher too. So I'm sure that he'd also been, you know, subjected to some of that anti African abuse that she'd lobbed at me. So I got the feeling that he he, you know, he pretended, oh, genius. Stop. But he did nothing to stop me. He just kinda stood by and let it happen. And afterwards, he was like, okay. Off you go. And then but he still reported me at the end, which really annoyed me. Was like, you let me do what I do, and you could at least kept quiet about it, but I suppose you had to keep his job. So and that's what happened. And then that was just before my exams, and I was supposed to be coming back to that school as a I mean, the year setup is different between England and America. But I was coming back to do my advanced levels, which was exams that you study that get you into college. So the first set of exams are just to get to see whether you're gonna go to work or go to college and go and do vocational qualifications. So I was coming back to do my advanced level, which would have got me into college. And I was supposed to be doing it at that same school. But after that fight, I got called into the the head's office and was like and they told me, you you can't come back to do your a levels here, so you're but you're pretty much expelled. I was told to leave the school. Deep down, I didn't care because I hated that school. I'd spent, you know, five years being abused every day at that school, so I'd wanted to go to another school to do my A levels, but my mother wasn't having it. She was like, No, this is a good school. Just stay in here. So it was like the universe was saying, no. You're gonna go somewhere else. I'm gonna start a new life. But my mother didn't see it that way. So she was furious and lambasted me for hours. And I was like, you know what? I'm done with this. This whole exam thing I don't wanna do any of this. This is all because you're forcing me to do this. I'm done with this life. So after my my mom screamed at me for hours. I went out to my room, and I went to the medicine cabinet in our bathroom, and I took a bunch of aspirins. I don't know what they called it. It was Advil? No. Advil is Abuprogan. Aspirin's a thing. So maybe tub. Right. So I took a a tub of aspirin and I just chugged them all back with a can of Coke. I was like, I'm done with this life. I'm gonna die and hopefully float around and watch you guys crying over me, and you're gonna feel bad. You know? So that was it was all anger. It was not it was less about wanting to end my life, but more about revenge. And going, you're gonna see what you've been doing to me all these years. It was more about that. It was more of a cry for help, really, than me wanting to die. But then the only way I could get these things that I wanted was to die kind of thing. So I took a tub of aspirin. And in the movies, you see all these people take tablets, they swallow them, they lie down, they go into sort of a deep unconsciousness and die peacefully in their sleep or choking on their own vomit, one of the two. But I was just I was hoping that I I would be the, you know, the prior where I'd be just fall asleep and just die peacefully and then float around and watch my mother scream in agony and and and grief. But aspirants don't do that to you. I didn't know that. So I took them and then lay there waiting to be unconscious. And I was like, when is this stuff gonna kick in? I need to be unconscious soon because in in in a few minutes, know my mom is gonna call me to do something. You know? I lay there for, like, twenty, twenty five minutes. I'm like, oh my god. This is not happening. I'm not. But I'm just gonna lie here, close my eyes, and fake it till I make it. So I just closed my eyes and laid there as if I was unconscious. And my mom had a bell in the house that she pressed, which rang upstairs when she wanted the kids. Because we were like and we were Downton Abbey before Downton Abbey. And so she rang the bell. I heard the bell. I laid down. You know? I was like, okay. Quick. Unconscious. You know? Unconscious. Come on. Come to me now. Come on. Oblivion. Come to me, oblivion. Nothing. My older sister comes up the stairs and goes, do you not hear mom calling you? You you she wants you downstairs, and I'm lying there pretending to be unconscious. And my sister's like, what's going on? She comes over. She sees the empty tub of aspirin and realizes and a note that an angry note that I'd written. And so she starts shaking me and slapping me, trying to wake me up. Now she slapped me hard. Now in normal life, I'd have been like, Ouch, ouch, what you did? But I was method acting at this point. So I stayed fake unconscious. So she runs downstairs, calls my younger brother who's kind of the mediator in the family because Gina's taken an overdose. I'm gonna call the ambulance, blah blah blah. So they call an ambulance. They they go tell my mom. My mom collapses on the floor screaming, so she's no use to anybody at this point. The paramedics ambulance comes, paramedics come upstairs. They run up. I hear the footsteps because I'm obviously, I am conscious the entire time. Paramedics run-in, and they're they're looking at me. They're looking down my throat. They're looking at my eyes. They open my eyes to see you know, all that kind of stuff. Dilated my pupils out, whatever. And then they they say to my sister, what did she take? And my sister goes, there's an empty tub of aspirin here. So she took all of these. And then the paramedic is like, and then he kind of and then he kind of leans in to me and goes, okay. We know you're not unconscious, love. Just look. Why don't you just wait? Open your eyes. We'll walk down to the the ambulance. We'll have a chat on the way to the hospital. It'll all be good. But in my head, I'm like, I don't know how he knows this, but I am method. I am not waking up. So I refused. I I played unconscious to the end. In And the end, poor paramedics, because my bedroom was on the Top Floor of a floor store a four storey house, they had to carry my limp body down four flights of stairs into the ambulance. And I played unconscious all the way to the hospital until it got to the moment where they got me into some, like a surgical room, and I heard the doctor say, gastric lavage. And I'm like, what is that? I need to know what that is. So I pretended to come out of unconsciousness. Oh, oh, what's happening? And, I woke up just in time to have a vacuum cleaner pipe shoved down my throat. If anybody's taken an overdose and had their stomach pumped, they will know exactly what I'm talking about. So a gastric lavatta is a stomach pump. They basically clamp your mouth open. And in some cases, which with me, because I was fighting it, they'd sort of clamp my arms down and basically shoved what the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner pipe down my throat into my stomach, and basically vacuumed my insides out like a wet carpet. So it was and that was my one and only experience of attempting suicide because I was like, if I ever do this again, I'm gonna make sure it's something that you can't come back from because I never wanna go through that stomach pumping experience again. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[19:01]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. And you said in the back there was like no anesthetic or anything either. They just like No anesthetic. They do it while you're awake. My gosh. Feel like you should be the poster child for why, like, teenagers should not commit suicide. You should be like, You know what, guys? Like, it doesn't it's even worse than whatever's going on. This is terrible. I don't mean to joke about it. It's obviously extremely serious. It's still a subject, you know, and I you know, it was a very dark time in my life. But I feel like the stomach punk was made as a deterrent.

[19:32]Gina Yashere: Like, yeah, this is what happens if you try and commit suicide and you survive. This is what we're gonna put you through. So go back and tell all your friends. We just watched this 30 for 30 documentary. I don't know if you saw it. There was a baseball player who tried to kill himself,

[19:45]Zibby Owens: and he shot himself and somehow missed his brain and only got his eye and had to Anyway, lay I don't even know why I'm saying this. But if you want an even worse story, I don't know why I'm drawn to all these, like, you know, but whatever. Well, I'm delighted that everything worked out okay, obviously. And, you know, that you came on the other side and somehow, you know, I have to say, like, reading the beginning of your story, like, you wouldn't necessarily think that, like, the character in this book is gonna end up, you know, like, producing a CBS, like, primetime sitcom. Like, you know, I'm like, How do we get from here to there? It was such a fascinating journey that you had. Like, Oh, my gosh. And, you know, really amazing. And by the way, the show, I watched the preview and everything about Bal, but now I have to, like, go watch the show. And your Netflix special, too, I watched with my kids for part of it. You're like, you were so funny because you're like, I'm not afraid of flying. I'm afraid of flying, and then suddenly not flying at all. -GRETA: Well, that's the I know, but that's what everybody means but never says, which is, like, of course, you know, the genius of comedy. So did you ever think, like And I also wanted to talk about your relationship with your mom, who, you know, that is such a huge part of this book, is your how you navigated her and her moods and dictates and her how she raised you and how that affected you going forward and everything. Like, did you see any of this coming? Like, what do you think now? Like, now that you've especially gone through the exercise of writing this whole book, like, what do you make of the whole thing?

[21:23]Gina Yashere: I mean, writing the book was pretty cathartic because going back, a lot of feelings came out when I was writing the book. Like there was one chapter where I talked about a party that was across the street from my house. That was so sad. Yeah,

[22:17]Gina Yashere: I can see why my mom was the way she was. She was abandoned in England by my father who went back to Nigeria, who was like, I cannot be a lawyer in England because this country is too racist and they won't let us follow the careers that we're qualified for. So I'm gonna let's go back to Nigeria where we can live the life that we're supposed to have. And my mom was like, no.

[22:54]Gina Yashere: in London with no friends, no family, two toddlers, pregnant with a third, and, you know, she she was alone. She was alone. And she had to put me and my next brother into foster care temporarily while she went into hospital to have my younger brother because she had nobody. She had no support system in England at the time to help her look after her kids. Yeah, me and my brother were in foster care for, like I I don't know. It felt like forever. When you're three years old, it feels like forever, but it was probably, you know, a couple of months, at most or something. Yeah. So we went into foster care while my mom went into hospital in the seventies England, was super racist and still is. You know, the hospital system, if you look at the statistics in England now, black women are several times more likely to die in hospitals and medical care than white women because they're treated differently. The bias and racism spread its tentacles throughout the health care system. So my mother is in a hospital in England in the seventies where the racism is outward, having a baby by herself, abandoned by her husband. So that fear sort of permeated everything she did when she was raising us. The fear of, you know, if something happened to one of her kids, she'd be blamed because she had no husband. It's just her. So, yeah, that fear permeated everything, and that's why she was so overprotective of us. Never let basically never letting us out of her sight. So looking back, even though it was a horrible time for me as a child, like, going, Oh, God. I can't have friends over. I can't go to friends' house. I can't go to parties. I can't go on school trips. I can't learn to swim. Are you serious? Looking back, I could see

[24:37]Zibby Owens: why she was the way she was. And you even said somewhere that now you have a dog, and so you understand. Right?

[24:44]Gina Yashere: Yeah. Have I don't have kids, but I have a puppy, and I kind of understand. Every ten minutes, I'm like, what's And I live in an area where there's a lot of nature, coyotes, bobcats, bears. You know? So I'm like, you can't leave her outside alone. Put her on a house. Put her on a tether. You because I think you'll grab her. And that's how I am all the time. And the dog must be looking at me like, I'm a dog. Let me run. So I can understand to a much smaller extent. Obviously, dog in no way is equivalent to a child. But I can understand to a smaller extent that fear of something happening

[25:16]Zibby Owens: to something or somebody you love. Do you know what mean? Well, I feel like there is so much value in understanding and, like, putting yourself in someone's shoes and all of that. But it still, you know, can't make up for everything else. Know? I feel like when you understand people, maybe it you know, does it really make the hurt go away? I don't know.

[25:35]Gina Yashere: No. But it was but when I when I wrote the book, it all came out of me, and I didn't realize I've been holding on to a lot of the resentment, especially when I write wrote the the chapter about my stepbastard. I call him stepbastard. He was my step my stepfather. He was a horrible, horrible man. And when I was writing that that chapter, all the anger and hatred came out of me. So I was like, oh my gosh. I've been holding on to this stuff since I was a teenager. I'm nearly 50 years old now. Like, I've been holding on to this stuff for a year. So it was great to write the book and have it all just come out. It was cleansing. And him, I don't forgive at all. If there is a hell, I hope he's in it, and I hope he's burning. If there is, I don't know if there is, but I hope he's getting some kind of I hope he comes back as a cockroach. I believe in reincarnation. I hope he comes back as a cockroach and gets splattered immediately and keeps coming back as a cockroach. But there is forgiveness. With my mom, I know it was out of love. It was out of love. Yep. And so, you know, I can look back and I can forgive her for that because I know that, you know, she didn't know any other way. She had no support system. She knew no other way. She did the best that she could with the skill set that she had. But yeah, so writing this book has definitely been very helpful in sort of processing all those feelings. It's amazing. I mean, they really like,

[26:51]Zibby Owens: maybe therapists like don't want people to know how great it is to write a book because they'd all be out of business. Like, just skip fifty years of therapy, go straight to the memoir and call me in a few weeks. Well, having gotten through this huge emotional and, you know, intellectual project, you know, what advice would you have for other people who are trying to write a book or accomplish something similar? Just do it. I mean, I didn't know if I could write a book. I didn't know.

[27:21]Gina Yashere: You know, it it all started from throwback Thursday hashtags on Instagram when you post an old picture. That's how it started. I'd post an old picture and tell the story behind the picture, people were like, oh my god. This is so interesting. I didn't know about it's it's about you. Please write a book. Write a book. And then I was like, oh, okay. This might be interesting. So I started just collecting these these posts and just putting them in a folder. I never really thought about lucidity writing a book. And then this is how the universe works. At the same time, a lit agent contacted me and Harper Collins publishers contacted me and said contacted my agent and were like, Gina would be interested in writing a book. So that's how the universe works. So and I didn't think I was going to write it, to be fair. I I just got you know, I I I got the book deal, then I got the TV show, and the TV show took over my life, Bob Harts, Abishola, because I'm a write coexec producer, writer, and actor on the show. It took over my every waking hour, and I thought, I don't think I'm the way to write this book. Because I've looked at other people who've written books, they go off to to Ireland or or go in the higher and just sit in a room for months and just write. And I was like, I haven't got time to do that. So I I spoke to somebody who's gonna be my ghostwriter. I got a ghostwriter originally. And I spoke to her, and I was like, I'll tell you the stories, I'll record everything. You write it. But when she came back with what she'd written, I was like, oh, no. This is this is not me at all. This is not gonna work. I'm gonna so I had to fire her and start again from scratch. But luckily for me, I don't think you're ever gonna hear this from anybody else, but luckily for me, COVID hit. It's a horrible way to say it, but because we're in quarantine for over a year, I was like, well, this is the universe telling me to buckle down and get my shit together. So I wrote this book during quarantine. So what my advice would be to people is you may not think you could do it, but you will somehow find that time, find the strength to do it. You'll find that skillset. You don't realize whether you can do something until you actually do it. I never knew I had a book in me, but once I sat down and started writing, it just poured out at me. So give yourselves the opportunity to try it and learn. If it works, great. If it doesn't,

[29:34]Zibby Owens: at least you tried it. And that would be my advice. I love that. Well, I know per your earlier comment about reincarnation that you believe that there was a lot of spirit of your grandmother in you, and your birthmark is, you know, in line with where she, you know, got poisoned or whatever happened. Anyway, I feel like you have taken all of her strength and used all of the skills and made such a difference. So bravo to you, and that's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, best of luck, Gina. And I'll be now watching your show and watching all your comedy and, like, laughing like crazy. I'm so glad I got to know you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for reading the book. I hope all the mothers out there who haven't got time to read books, read this book, because I think you'll find you'll get through it pretty quickly. I keep it fast paced. You do. It did. It went very quickly and it was super entertaining and emotional and great. And it's always great learning about somebody else's experience. And that's how we all grow as people, right? It's something not similar to our lives necessarily, but Exactly. There you All right. Right. Bye, Dina. Thank you. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.