Me Talk Pretty One Day Study Guide

Born in New York State in 1956, David Sedaris is the second of six children. An engineer at IBM, his father was relocated to North Carolina when Sedaris was still young, taking the family to Raleigh, where Sedaris spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence. After graduating from high school, Sedaris attended Western Carolina University, majoring in art because he wanted to match his younger sister Gretchen’s artistic talent. Before long, he transferred to Kent State University, where he continued to major in art until he finally dropped out in 1977, at which point he devoted himself to conceptual art and started taking crystal meth—a habit he eventually kicked around the time he stopped practicing conceptual art. In 1983 he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1987. While he was living in Chicago, the radio host Ira Glass heard him reading from his diary in a club and asked him to come on his show, The Wild Room. Sedaris’s appearance on The Wild Room went over extremely well, and he became a regular contributor to National Public Radio, reading humorous essays on the air and becoming popular amongst public radio listeners. On the success of his radio appearances, he published his first book, Barrel Fever, in 1994, followed by Naked and Holidays on Ice in 1997 and Me Talk Pretty One Day in 2000. He has now published 11 books and is a regular contributor to Ira Glass’s radio program This American Life. His work also frequently appears in The New Yorker. 

There are very few—if any—historical references in Me Talk Pretty One Day. The most historically engaged moment comes when readers are invited to reflect on the social atmosphere of North Carolina during the 1960s, when Sedaris was a child struggling to hide his sexual orientation. At that point in time, many people were openly homophobic, making it especially hard for him to be forthright about his identity (though it’s worth noting that this kind of homophobia still has not fully abated). Another historical aspect of Me Talk Pretty One Day is Sedaris’s hesitancy to embrace technological change. Although his father has been excited about the proliferation of the internet for years, Sedaris doesn’t want to start using email when it becomes readily available. However, his sister Amy eventually convinces him of the benefits of the internet after showing him a lewd video, helping him appreciate the internet and its sudden popularity (an experience that presumably took place sometime in the late 1990s). 

Many of David Sedaris’s other books are quite similar to Me Talk Pretty One Day, since most of them feature him as the central protagonist and recount humorous and poignant moments throughout his life. Some of these titles include SantaLand Diaries, Naked, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, and Calypso. In terms of authors who are similar to Sedaris, Dave Eggers bears certain similarities, especially since his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius blends the lines between fact and fiction—something Sedaris often does in order to emphasize the comedic elements of his essays. Me Talk Pretty One Day is also similar to Augusten Burroughs’s memoir Running with Scissors, since both books feature quirky parents and the difficulties of childhood and adolescence. Because of his emphasis on humor, Sedaris’s writing is also comparable in some ways to the work of George Saunders, including Saunders’s short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Tenth of December. Because Sedaris isn’t just an author but something of a public persona, Me Talk Pretty One Day might also be considered alongside other celebrity memoirs, including Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Tina Fey’s Bossypants, and Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?