Ziwe Really “Freaked It” With Her Hilarious First Book, Black Friend: Essays

Let’s talk about footnotes. By the way, I love footnotes as a concept. I love footnotes as a tool. I love footnotes stylistically. I’m a Virgo and a nerd, so of course, they speak to my joy, but talk to me about your relationship to footnotes because they are such a critical part of this book.

Interestingly enough, I’m a Pisces, and Virgos and Pisces are sort of antithetical to each other.  I feel that I have organization, but to a Virgo, it seems like chaos. I think footnotes have the same application, in that I wish I could say it was the organization of thoughts, but really, it’s that every single road that I created in this city has a side street and an alley and then a sewer. That’s just the way that my mind works. It’s not linear. I wish that it was so that I could find peace. I would constantly have these interjections that I believed in my heart of hearts were essential to essays, but then in the body of the essays, they would totally disrupt the flow. It’s like, “How do you not talk about Miss Claudette when you’re talking about Rosa Parks?” The footnotes were this reprieve where I could include essays that were too short for the full book, or they were half ideas or footnotes that were historically important but not necessarily rhetorically important in the literal body of the text in a way that did them justice. … If you don’t care, you could read the essay start to finish and not have anything disrupted, but the footnotes are important to my own logic.

To me, it’s such a thoughtful way of presenting information and ideas because you are giving a “choose your own adventure” aspect to the reading process. What are you in the mood for? How deep do you want to go? It actually feels quite generous of you.

I used to read encyclopedias as a kid, the Britannica, front to back, and I would retain that information, and it’s all these fun facts. That’s where I come from as a reader—just being like, “What fun facts can I share at a dinner party?”

I sometimes think about the youngs coming up in this day and age and not having the physical encyclopedia in their house, and I think they’re really missing out in one area. Yes, they have all of the information in the world on their phone, but there’s something about an old-school encyclopedia.

One-hundred percent. Also, I grew up with dial-up internet. You’d get a phone call, and you’d be like, “Nooooo!” You’d have to start Dexter’s Lab game all over again. It was so boring. I don’t remember how we entertained ourselves if not for having those old-school history books, encyclopedias, and finding things. Just finding things and the why. 

Do you have a favorite essay? Does it change?

I don’t have a favorite essay. They’re so different. It’s like picking a favorite child. Everyone has one, but they wouldn’t say. It depends more on the mood. I’m more surprised when individuals talk to me about what essays they specifically connected with. That, to me, is actually more exciting. When I did a podcast with Dua Lipa, she was the first person to ever talk to me about my book, and she really connected with the “WikiFeet” essay. That was surprising to me. I guess it makes total sense. You also have one, wow. When I was talking to my friend Chris Murphy at Vanity Fair, he really connected to the affirmative action essay. He went to Princeton and boarding school as well, so we could connect in that space of our lives, and we’ve been friends for years. But it was just really fascinating to see what friends, new and old, what really touched them. 

While you might not have a favorite per se, is there one that you enjoy reading out loud more than others?

“WikiFeet” is the essay that I performed live for years and then wrote it in my book and continued. I did a speech at Harvard Law School, and I read that essay. It was wild. I love HLS. I love ivy—you know, ivy towers.