The Heartbreak Years: A Memoir

Honey’s intimate debut memoir regales listeners with an account of her adventurous early adulthood years and her sometimes rocky journey to find her calling as a writer. Narrating her own work, Honey offers a biracial (Black and Filipino) woman’s take on dating, workplace microaggressions, and the financial struggles she faced from her first major romantic breakup, through the start of the COVID pandemic. The author candidly describes how singleness is a heavy burden without peers who can help lighten the load, but her tale does not play out like a reprise of Friends. Instead, Honey, who identifies as Black, focuses on the cultural shifts that took place with the rise of President Obama in her 20s and how destabilizing those years were. Musings on how to acquire a husband morph into a poignant exploration of self that speaks to anyone who has repeatedly stumbled in pursuit of the creative life.