Some books tell grand love stories. Others are gripping epics of tragic proportions, while others still are heartwarming tales of animals helping their owners. Mindy Kaling’s book, Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me? (And Other Concerns), is none of these things. Instead, it’s a short, hysterical look into the life of a very funny woman, briefly chronicling her journey from a chubby Indian kid in New England to a writer on one of television’s funniest shows, “The Office.”
It would be incorrect to call this book just a memoir; it’s a collection of thoughts, or “concerns,” all of which are quite funny. There’s the story of how Kaling was discovered: She and her best friend Brenda, struggling 20-somethings and comedy nerds in New York, wrote and starred in a two-person play about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Reading Kaling’s stories from this time made me wish I’d been more than 11 years old in 2003 and could have seen it.
Then, of course, there are the more mundane stories. There are tales of eating too many cupcakes, having meltdowns at work and going on miserable dates. Kaling poignantly describes the woes of being larger than a sample size in Hollywood (and life) with both humor and gravitas, allowing her to entertain while also making a point.
Kaling preaches the gospel of awkward girls who spent a lot of time watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail in high school, girls like myself. While reading this book, I spent a lot of time fighting the urge to take out a pen and write, “Yes!” all over the margins. As Kaling writes, “In high school, I had fun in my academic clubs, watching movies with my girlfriends, learning Latin, having long, protracted, unrequited crushes on older guys who didn’t know me, and yes, hanging out with my family.” That was my life, and, since you go to Georgetown, I’d bet that your life was probably at least a little like that, too.
One of the best things about the book was that after the 240 pages of stories, lists and gossip about Rainn Wilson and B.J. Novak, I felt like I knew Kaling, as if we were friends. We share the same feelings about men (namely, that it’s really easy for them to be seen as attractive), the movie Elf (comedy genius) and the first season of “The Office” (it has some of the best, yet underappreciated, episodes).
The book is not just stories of her life. Some chapters are merely lists of insights. Kaling’s criticisms of the current state of the entertainment industry are biting — under all her witty jokes about movies based on board games and more television shows about people losing weight, there’s a sense of true frustration at the current quality of entertainment. But in the end there’s hope: If women like Mindy Kaling are leading the future of entertainment, we’ll be laughing for a long time to come.
The book’s only problem is that it isn’t long enough. If you’re like me, you will not be able to stop reading it, and you’ll be sad when it’s over. It’s not a literary classic, but I know that in five years I’ll pick up my copy and laugh all over again. The book may not be timeless, but it’s a perfect snapshot of the year 2011 and of the concerns we have, like decoding the texts of people we’re flirting with, having vain photos in our phone cameras and wondering if, in fact, everyone is hanging out without us.
