On any given day, Damon Young can be spotted around Pittsburgh writing at Margaux in East Liberty or the Monterey Pub on the North Side. Over tea and cocktails, he’s been working on a brand new endeavor.
Young has been gearing up for the release of his latest book, That’s How They Get You, announced this past January. This new collection promises to challenge and entertain readers with his signature voice, this time alongside curated essays from some of his favorite collaborators.
“The one animating, recurring theme I can think of is shame,” Young says. “Finding ways to circumvent and subvert shame.”
“Be prepared to laugh out loud, to be entertained, to be challenged, and to be haunted in a way,” Young says. “And when people read this, I want them to think, ‘Why was this chapter chosen? What does this say about humor?’”
Young’s work, known for its sharp wit and fearless honesty, has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ and The Washington Post. His deeply personal and funny memoir What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker examines the absurdities, anxieties, and contradictions of being a Black man in America. Young has been recognized with numerous accolades including the Thurber prize for American humor.
For all of the humor in Young’s work, he insists that comedy isn’t something he actively tries to achieve.
“It’s the way that I see the world,” Young says. “When I write, I try to make sense of what’s happening, and also figure out the best way to articulate what’s happening in a way that’s readable, in a way that’s rigorous, in a way that’s honest, and in a way that’s entertaining. The humor isn’t something that I insert.”
For That’s How They Get You, Young says he selected contributors to his new book by turning to his mental Rolodex, and, laughing, admits that he trawled his Instagram connections to find fellow writers he thinks are funny.
There are 24 contributors in total, a number that Young reached after a year and a half of vetting; he has met and developed a personal relationship with all but two of them.
Young says some were obvious choices to him, such as Kiese Laymon, Deesha Philyaw, Brian Broome, Panama Jackson and Sai Grundy, who are friends of his he knows can turn out something hilarious and would be game to contribute to a body of work like this.
Young himself has two essays in the collection, but the book’s broader theme is what ties everything together.
For those familiar with Young’s writing, this blend of humor and introspection is nothing new. Doralee Brooks, City of Asylum’s 2022-2024 Poet Laureate of Allegheny County and professor emerita at the Community College of Allegheny County in Developmental Studies, admires Young’s writing for its raw quality.
“As an older person and as a woman, it’s so interesting for me to be able to experience his thinking, his life, his experience as a man and as a younger person,” Brooks says.
“I kept thinking, as I read his work, of this quote from the great poet Audre Lord: ‘In a world full of turmoil, remember that joy is an act of resistance,’” Brooks says. “Through joy, you counter and contrast oppressive structures. I really think that’s his method.”
“There’s just this honesty and willingness to confront in his work that I really appreciate,” Brooks says. “He is so precise, so detailed and so sensory in his language. He moves from an elevated diction to a colloquial diction right in the same piece. It gives his work this attractiveness and honestly, it’s just laugh-out-loud funny.”
Morgan Moody, producer of Young’s podcast Stuck with Damon Young, which aired on Spotify from 2022-2023, initially met Young at an event at the Children’s Museum. Moody and Young had similar childhoods in Pittsburgh, both attending the same grade school, St. Bart’s in Penn Hills.
Moody says that the podcast Stuck With Damon Young was really a place for Young to have conversations with guests about all of the topics Black men don’t have the space to talk about.
“Damon is very naturally funny,” Moody says. “I think any moment where he can organically be himself, it’s pretty funny. If he’s comfortable, you can really watch him be the humor award-winning writer that he is.”
That humor is evenly mixed with an unflinching look at serious topics. In What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, Young confronts white supremacy, racism, police brutality, and the gentrification of East Liberty. By extension, Young and his wife are actively navigating how to best reveal these truths to their children.
He says that educating and arming his children for the world they live in is about more than just conversation, though — it’s about an energy that is created within their home.
“They overhear us talking, they see our interactions and the people we engage with,” Young says. “For me, it wasn’t so much what my parents taught me specifically, it was just me witnessing. Almost like this osmosis effect. I’m hoping that we’ve created a space in our home that’s conducive for that same sort of exchange.”
“I want them to be happy, and I want them to be free,” Young says. “I want them to know that — as long as they aren’t harming themselves or anyone else — that I will support whatever it is they want to do and whoever it is they want to be.”
For Pittsburgh readers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker feels especially vivid. The changing streets of East Liberty, the anxieties of navigating predominantly white spaces (of which Pittsburgh has a plethora), and the ever-present humor Young held as a compass to survive it all, make Pittsburgh a character in its own right.
“Pittsburgh is uniquely white,” Young says. “That has affected how I think about race, how I think about culture, how I think about identity, how I think about place, and what does that mean in terms of creating a character when the character is a setting where you may feel othered consistently, and you’re trying to find safety, freedom, and joy within this space that at times is antagonistic to all of those things.”
Young grapples with Pittsburgh’s changing cultural landscape in his memoir, particularly the effects of gentrification on Black communities in neighborhoods like East Liberty, where he grew up on Mellon Street.
In February, Young attended “Lifting Liberty,” an exhibition by multimedia artist Njaimeh Njie at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater exploring the legacy of Black cultural spaces in East Liberty.
“The process — emotional, intellectual, spiritual — of thinking about and feeling about the ‘new’ East Liberty is a living and breathing and shape-shifting organism,” Young says. “[Njie] said something that night that has continued to stick inside of me. To paraphrase, it’s that we are living archives with duties to remember, repeat, to relay what we know with radical honesty.”
Riley Kirk, a journalist from Regent Square, worked the event the same day she finished Young’s memoir. After picking it up in a second-hand bookstore, Kirk, against her better judgment, spent her week’s gas money on it. She was captivated by his descriptions of familiar landmarks from her own childhood in Pittsburgh, like the North Versailles Walmart.
“I think what I like about his work is the conversational tone,” Kirk says. “I’ll be going into That’s How They Get You with no expectations. It seems like a totally different entity than his debut.”
“What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a great read for anyone who lives in Pittsburgh,” Nat Moss, general manager of Riverstone Books, says. “He captures such a unique perspective in his work. Pittsburgh is a historically tough town for Black people and he captures the complexities of that really well.”
Moss says Young’s memoir is a book she always makes sure is available at Riverstone.
The steady demand for What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker speaks to Young’s ability to connect with readers through his humor and how much of himself he puts into his work. With That’s How They Get You, he continues that exploration, this time bringing in a chorus of voices to expand on the complexities of Black humor.
“What I wanted to do was create something that, in 250 pages, touches on all of the different ways Black people can be funny and introduce humor into our work,” Young says. “I write about shame; I have a friend Hillary Crosley Coker who writes about a miscarriage, and others have written about these deeply, deeply sober topics, but have found the humor in them.”
“As I say in the intro, what makes Black humor Black isn’t necessarily a Black person making a joke
or making a joke about a ‘Black’ subject; it’s humor that goes places that only we are able to go,” Young says. “These are essays that could have only been written by Black Americans.”
That’s How They Get You will be available on shelves June 3.
Michelangelo Pellis is a Point Park University student and editor of the Point Park News Service.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2025.
