Time and time again, W. Kamau Bell’s traveling docuseries, United Shades of America, gives me a renewed sense of how not to be an ignorant piece of shit. Whether the topic is the colonization of Hawaii or the realities of what actually goes down at the US-Mexico border, I become better informed with each episode. Bell has mastered the art of casually interviewing a diverse range of people—he listens to understand—and he explains in his book that he’s “built a career on asking ‘dumb questions.’”
Bell’s 2017 memoir, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’4’’, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian is geared toward the fanbase he gained from a prolific career as a sociopolitical stand-up comic, podcast host, and TV star. In Awkward Thoughts, Bell tries to play it off like he’s an uncool person by nature, but at this point in his career, it’s obvious Bell is something much cooler than cool: He is a good person. Perhaps that’s why he’s able to joke about things like slavery and lynching in a tasteful-but-still-funny manner. Thirty pages in, I had already LOL’d three times in a quiet downtown coffee shop.
