43 pages • 1 hour read
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
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Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “My All-Important Legacy”
Part 6, Chapter 33 Summary: “Strict Instructions for My Funeral”
This chapter lists Kaling’s detailed instructions for her funeral. Ex-boyfriends and significant others of ex-boyfriends are not allowed to attend. Her college a cappella group is prohibited from performing, as is anyone seeking to debut original music. Kaling instructs her guests to avoid phone calls or turning the funeral into a roast, insisting that the funeral maintain a somber atmosphere. At the end of the funeral, each person will receive a gift bag containing a framed photo of Kaling, an energy bar, a copy of one of her childhood drawings, and a letter from the president praising Kaling’s contributions to society.
Part 6, Chapter 34 Summary: “A Eulogy for Mindy Kaling, by Michael Schur”
This chapter, written by fellow writer on The Office and creator of Parks and Recreation Mike Schur, serves as a pre-death eulogy for Kaling. Schur describes Kaling’s sudden death at a Dubai Bloomingdale’s. Schur praises Kaling’s work ethic and confidence. In his closing, Schur considers Kaling’s afterlife:
I console myself by thinking, Well, I guess the angels just wanted her to shut up. I will miss her dearly, and I hope that she is up in heaven right now watching us and smiling, even though deep down I know that if there is an afterlife, she’s a pretty much open-and-shut case for hell. (216)
Part 6, Chapter 35 Summary “Good-bye”
When Kaling was a child, she loved The Sound of Music and memorized “So Long, Farewell,” playing it to her parents each night from the stair landing. Even though Kaling likes to leave parties without anyone knowing, she also enjoys a long farewell. She exhibits this by answering questions she imagines her readers might have. No, she has never won a spelling bee, she explains, nor did she address the question of whether women are funny: “I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate” (218). Kaling states that she hopes her next book will be about her marital life and bids the reader good-bye.
Part 6 Analysis
Part 6, fewer than 10 pages, finalizes the three themes and employs Kaling’s favorite literary devices: Juxtaposition, hyperbole, and listing (See: Literary Devices). She begins with a list in Chapter 33 of instructions for her funeral. Once again, the technique gives Kaling space to apply fast-paced wit with quick changes: ”No candles. I hate candles. This isn’t a sex scene from Grey’s Anatomy” (213). All parts of Kaling’s life are represented in this chapter, including her nerdy past as an acapella performer.
The chapter is paired with a eulogy by writer Mike Schur, who worked on The Office with Kaling. Schur and Kaling’s friendship led to Kaling’s time as a guest writer on Saturday Night Live. While Pursuing a Career in Film Media, Kaling quickly realized the importance of joyful and meaningful friendships. Schur represents this type of relationship. In his fake eulogy, Schur refers to the confidence that Kaling exhibits: “A complete novice in the world of television writing...and yet somehow far more confident than everyone else” (215). Although the passage pokes fun at Kaling’s inflated sense of self, Schur adds to the theme of the work.
Pursuing work as a writer, actor, director, or other career in entertainment is famously challenging. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? shows that risk-taking and self-confidence are necessary to achieve this goal. The narrative of the entire memoir is marked by these two qualities. Kaling was a nerd who liked to read, think, and study. She enjoyed observing people and collaborating with others. These qualities are all part of The Power of Being a Nerd. Kaling then took those skills and applied them to her career.
When she realized that the entertainment industry was not interested in making space for her, Kaling made space for herself. She wrote a play that was successful and leveraged it into a meeting that landed her in a writer’s room on a successful television show. Although Kaling’s story, like all stories of fame, involves elements of luck and privilege, her self-confidence and gumption in advocating for herself and willingness to try new things helped to place her where she wanted to be.
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