*Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams-Lee spent years fighting to build a life she was never taught to believe was possible. Now, the comedian and actress says she’s finally learning to accept what she accomplished.
Her second memoir, “Ms. American Dream,” arrives Sept. 29 from Atria Books, with Jeannine Amber. The follow-up to her NAACP Image Award-nominated “Rabbit” traces Ms. Pat’s journey from poverty and teenage motherhood to Hollywood.
“People kept asking for a follow-up to the book ‘Rabbit,’” Ms. Pat told EURweb. “People want to hear how I’m doing now.”
Ms. Pat Found Her American Dream at Home
For Ms. Pat, success once meant making a lot of money. Life eventually forced her to reconsider that definition.
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“One thing I realized… money can’t buy you happiness,” she said. “My grandkids and my family, that’s my American dream. I’m happy.”
She rejects the traditional formula that equates success with relentless work, money, and material possessions.
“The American dream should be about making yourself happy,” she said. “My American dream is I can walk in this house and see the people that truly love me no matter what.”
That perspective gives “Ms. American Dream” its foundation. Ms. Pat wanted readers to consider their own definitions of success while following how hers changed.
“I just laid out what I went through in my life and how I got to where I’m at today,” she said.
White Audiences Taught Her Something About Poverty
Ms. Pat began performing stand-up in Atlanta before moving to Indiana, where she essentially had to restart her comedy career.
“Nobody knew me. It was a different demographic. It was all white people,” she recalled. “So I had to start all the way back over.”
Performing for white audiences also challenged assumptions Ms. Pat had formed from the television she watched growing up. She said TV often showed Black families struggling while presenting white families as largely untouched by the same problems. That image fell apart when she began telling predominantly white audiences about poverty and becoming a teenage mother.
“I really learned that what I’ve been through as a young black girl growing up in Atlanta in poverty, that poverty had no color,” she said. “Poverty is poverty, and it can hit anybody at any time, or you can be born into it.”
She was especially surprised when white audience members connected with her experiences.
“So to realize when I was on stage in front of all of these white people talking about teenage pregnancy, and they could relate, or they had had their baby like I did, I was like, wait a minute. This is universal,” she said. “That was very shocking to me.”
Success Couldn’t Silence Her Mother’s Voice
Ms. Pat’s climb eventually brought television deals, writers’ rooms, and her own Emmy-nominated sitcom. Yet recognition created an unexpected struggle.
“I was really scared of fame,” she said. “I wanted the money because I needed the money and I knew I was funny and I knew I was different, but I wanted to hide. I didn’t want the fame because I’m also from the street, and when you be flashy, you go to jail.”
Praise also collided with years of emotional wounds. “I’ve never heard nobody say, ‘Oh, my God, you’re so good. Oh, I’m so proud of you,’” she said.
Her mother’s criticism remained especially difficult to escape.
“I had this voice of my mama saying that, you know, I wasn’t sh*t and you ain’t gonna never be sh*t,” she said.
Those memories followed Ms. Pat even as her career grew.
“The things I’ve been through in my past would not allow me to celebrate the things I had accomplished,” she said.
Now She’s Learning to Accept What She Built
Ms. Pat says that battle has finally started shifting.
“Every day I’m getting better at who I am and the accomplishments that I made,” she said. “I’m beginning to accept them.”
Her professional life gives her plenty to absorb. Paramount recently ordered VH1’s “America’s Funniest People,” starring Ms. Pat, while BET renewed “Ms. Pat Settles It” for Season 4. Those projects arrive alongside “Ms. American Dream” and an expanded BET Studios deal covering producing, writing and performing.
“So it’s time for me to say, ‘You OK, girl, you doing well,’” she said. “But it took a lot for me to get there.”
Becoming a two-time author carries its own unlikely punchline. “Here I am with my second book. I don’t even f*cking like to read,” Ms. Pat joked.
She once couldn’t imagine writing one book, much less two. “You couldn’t have told me 25 years ago I would be an author of two damn books,” she said.
“Ms. American Dream” ultimately captures more than Ms. Pat’s rise through comedy. It documents her journey toward accepting the success she once struggled to celebrate.
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Paramount Announces ‘America’s Funniest People,’ A New Series with Ms. Pat
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