By Chinelo Eze
31 August 2022 |
4:05 pm
After becoming recognized for her talents outside of Hollywood, Jenifer Lewis may be considering changing the title of her next book. “Walking in My Joy: In These Streets” (Amistad, 320 pp., out now) is Lewis’ second book and contains serious accounts of Lewis’ time in lockdown, including when the actress slept by Kathy Griffin’s side…
Jenifer Lewis in the middle
After becoming recognized for her talents outside of Hollywood, Jenifer Lewis may be considering changing the title of her next book.
“Walking in My Joy: In These Streets” (Amistad, 320 pp., out now) is Lewis’ second book and contains serious accounts of Lewis’ time in lockdown, including when the actress slept by Kathy Griffin’s side after the comedian overdosed on sleeping pills. While some stories are grim, others stories are hilarious, swear-laden, cautionary tales including how she learned the hard way to listen to a health clinic’s advice on keeping near a bathroom after having a wheatgrass enema.
While Lewis is vivacious on the cover and appears ready to execute her Rockette-style kick at any minute, another picture on the opposite page contrasts the actress’ happiness and shows her in a hospital with a swollen jaw just as the pandemic was starting.
“I wanted to shock everyone after that beautiful cover. I have wanted to pull the reader right back into reality. COVID affected us all and stress levels went beyond the rooftop,” Lewis says “It was a time that we all contemplated our death.”
Lewis describes how she boarded a ship to Antarctica three years ago in an effort to get away from the situation of the world in “Walking.” She had no idea that a casual talk with the French boat’s captain would lead to orders to return home and inform everyone who will listen that we are in reality in peril. At the speed of light, the Arctic is melting.
- After that conversation, according to Lewis, she went to a vacant lounge on the ship and began writing “Climate Change Is Real,” that she later shared on Instagram and set the stage for a number of other cautionary tunes from the starlet on the social media site.
Lewis thanks her collaborators in the nearly 12-page acknowledgments section of the book, mentioning Dolly Parton, “all my babies on the ‘Black-ish’ team,” and Queen Latifah for “taking me home when I was drunk on the streets of New York.”
Off the pages, Lewis is quite complimentary of the crew who participated on her most recent production of “I Love That for You.” On the Showtime comedy series co-created by Vanessa Bayer, Lewis plays the ice queen CEO of the home shopping network that is the center of the show, a role Lewis says she’s “having the time of my life with.”
