Wonder Years

Comedic memoirist Mishna Wolff gets down with her misguided teenage self.

Published last month, “I'm Down” by Mishna Wolff loses a bit of the verve that her solo performances of some of its material had, about three years ago (see review, 5/4/06). This autobiography of her childhood and teenage years in a massively dysfunctional and poverty-stricken family is more serious memoir in print form than something along the lines of Chelsea Handler’s two books [Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea and My Horizontal Life], which survey her own past in more of a joke-a-minute-filled narrative.

Different aspects of Wolff's story, growing up with a father with a deep affection for black culture and black women, who rarely seemed to hold a job and seemed convinced that he could remodel the front of the family home with a bulldozer -- leaving a ten-foot drop in front of the front door -- play well in print than those that played well in her stage show. For instance, her dad's constant reminder that “your neighborhood is where you live,” was much more vivid for all its absurdity when she intoned it on stage than on the page.

But other parts of Wolff’s stories, given more room in print, do achieve similar effect, such as the story of what drives her to finally throw all her belongings in garbage bags and move in with her mom instead of her dad; and tales of how she disappointed her dad by being less than gung ho about school athletics, namely track and basketball. Later, she did find a niche in swimming, leading to an epic tale of how her dad insisted on taking part in her swim team’s 3-mile lake swim one year.

Wolff’s depictions of feeling out of place in a largely black elementary school and summer day camp program are equally effective in print as they were in her stage show, although it is missing her amusing anecdote about her first crush. But she did keep, and explore at length, how she managed to master “capping,” to hold her own with her classmates. In fact, some of the later tales of how she has to then adjust to a lily-white private school, are the more uproarious portions of the book.

The press materials for “I’m Down” note that it’s been chosen for this year’s Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab, and it is easy to see the incidents and story of her childhood turned into an entertaining movie, considering that some of this material is livelier when delivered by the author as a solo performance. The book does add more context, depth and perspective to Wolff’s stage piece, and marrying that to performances in a movie version could bring it all together as a striking entertainment.