Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation
by Hannah Gadsby
A comic explains why the punchline lied.
For you if
you have laughed along at your own expense for years and wonder what it cost.
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Hannah Gadsby announced she was quitting comedy on a Netflix stage, then wrote the full story behind it. This is a book about how a joke is built, and why self-deprecation works as slow poison for people already on the margins. Funny sentences carry hard ones here: homophobia in Tasmania, assault, a late autism diagnosis. The argument is that trauma deserves the whole story, not a tight five.
Where This Book Lives
Brutal in places: homophobic violence and sexual assault are described plainly. Pairs with Born Standing Up and The Comedians for the craft side and the cost side of the same job. Gadsby is Australian (Tasmanian); the Nanette special itself is not in the movie catalog.
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
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Where to watch: Streaming on Disney+, HuluLetterboxd ↗
Funny Boy(2020)
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Where to watch: Streaming on NetflixLetterboxd ↗
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
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For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
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Last Night at the Telegraph Club
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