Mia Mercado
Mia Mercado is a humor writer based in the Midwest. Her work has been featured in places like The New Yorker, the New York Times, Washington Posts’s The Lily, Bustle, McSweeney’s, Reductress, BUST.com, The American Bystander, Hallmark Cards, and a bottle she threw in the river when she was 9. Her debut collection of humorous non-fiction essays WEIRD BUT NORMAL is set to publish with HarperOne the summer of 2020. She grew up in Wisconsin and probably says “bag” wrong. Currently, she lives in Kansas City, working on freelance writing and self-control while eating chips.
Books by Mia
Birth control. Body hair removal cream. Boobs. It’s all weird, but also pretty normal.
Navigating racial identity, gender roles, workplace dynamics, and beauty standards, Mia Mercado's hilarious essay collection explores the contradictions of being a millennial woman, which usually means being kind of a weirdo. Whether it’s spending $30 on a candle that smells like an ocean that doesn’t exist, offering advice on how to ask about someone’s race (spoiler: just don’t, please?), quitting a job that makes you need shots of whiskey on your lunch break, or finding a more religious experience in the skincare aisle at Target than your hometown Catholic church, Mia brilliantly unpacks what it means to be a professional, absurdly beautiful, horny, cute, gross human. Essays include:
Depression Isn’t a Competition but Why Aren’t I Winning?
My Dog Explains My Weekly Schedule
Mustache Lady
White Friend Confessional
Treating Objects Like Women
With sharp humor and wit, Mia shares the awkward, uncomfortable, surprisingly ordinary parts of life, and shows us why it’s strange to feel fine and fine to feel strange.
“And, at the center of it all, am I actually nice or am I just performing a role I think I’m expected to play?” Mia Mercado is a razor-sharp cultural critic and essayist known for her witty and hilarious dissections of the uncomfortable truths that rule our lives. In this thought-provoking collection of new essays, Mercado examines what it means to be “polite,” “agreeable,” and “nice.” She covers topics from the subtleties of the “Bad Bitch” and why women dominate the ASMR market, to what makes her dog an adorable little freak and how you know if you’re shy. This is a book about the unspoken trick mirror of our “good” intentions: the inherent performance of the social media apology, celebrating men when they do the bare minimum, and why we trust a Midwesterner to watch our stuff when we go pee.
Throughout, she ponders her identity as an Asian woman and asks what “nice” even means—and why anyone would want to be it. With writing that is as precise as it is profound, and cultural references that range from trash reality television to the New York Times Sunday-morning crossword puzzle, Mercado uncovers weird, long-overdue truths about our frailties and failings. In the end, she sees them not as a source of shame but as a cause for celebration. Filled with revelations that range from the silly to the serious,
She’s Nice Though offers a mind-bending glimpse into the illusions and delusions of contemporary life—and reveals who we *really* are when no one is watching.
