I was working on a rush logo design for a vegan taco truck at 1 AM—eyes burning, Frida sleeping directly on my wrist so I couldn't move the mouse properly—when I started this book. I expected background noise. I expected to chuckle at some gross jokes and move on. Instead, I found myself sitting in the dark, staring at my monitor, listening to Sarah Silverman talk about childhood depression and absolutely losing it.
(Diego, my other cat, judged me from the bookshelf. He hates when I get emotional over comedians.)
Here's the thing—I went into this thinking I knew what I was getting. The title literally has the word "Pee" in it. I was ready for the shock value, the crassness, the "look at me, I'm offensive" shtick. And yeah, that's all there. But what I wasn't ready for was how much I'd actually care.
The Tears Behind the Fart Jokes
Let's be real for a second. If you can't handle talk about bodily fluids, sexual awkwardness, or just general filth, close this tab. Seriously. My Abuela—God rest her soul—would have grabbed the holy water and possibly an exorcist if she heard five minutes of this.
But once you get past the initial "wow, she really went there" reaction, the vulnerability hits you like a truck. Sarah talks about her bedwetting not just as a funny quirk, but as this deep, shameful trauma that defined her childhood. It's raw. The way she describes the anxiety of sleepovers? My heart broke.
I realized about halfway through that the humor is armor. She's throwing these shocking jokes at you to keep you at a distance, but then she sneaks in these gut-punch moments about her family, her sister, and her mental health. You know when you're laughing with a friend and suddenly they drop a truth bomb that makes the room go quiet? That. The whole book is that moment.
I felt a similar gut-punch reading Stone Cold Truth—another brash personality peeling back layers of trauma with unflinching humor.Why Only Sarah Could Read This
I usually talk about how a narrator handles a book, but here, the narrator is the book. There's absolutely no way anyone else could have read this. Her timing is—chef's kiss. Obviously, she's a pro comedian, so the punchlines land perfectly. But it's the quiet moments that got me.
Her voice shifts. She goes from this loud, brash, "I don't care what you think" tone to a softer, almost fragile register when she talks about the hard stuff. It feels intimate. Like she's whispering secrets to you in a bathroom at a party while everyone else is outside having fun. (And honestly, isn't that the best kind of memoir?)
Who This Is (And Isn't) For
I almost skipped this because I thought it would just be hours of shock-jock humor. I prefer my crying sessions to come from romance novels, thank you very much. But this weirdly fits my "make me feel something" criteria.
It's messy. It's chaotic. It jumps around. But it feels human. It's not a polished, PR-approved celebrity memoir where everything is a "lesson learned." It's just Sarah saying, "Hey, I was a mess, I'm still kind of a mess, but here we are."
Listen if: you want comedy that sneaks up on you with real emotional weight, or you've ever used humor to hide your own hard stuff. Skip if: crude humor genuinely bothers you, or you're looking for a neat, inspirational arc—this ain't it.
I came for the jokes, but I stayed for the therapy session. If you can stomach the gross-out moments (and there are plenty), there's a really sweet, sad story underneath all the pee.
Just maybe don't listen to it with your grandma in the room. Trust me on this one.
