Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Buffering
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/2/1986
WEBSITE: http://hannahhart.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5177123/ * http://deystreet.harpercollins.com/bufferingbook
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 2, 1986, in San Francisco, CA.
EDUCATION:Studied literature in college.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and producer. Film actress in Camp Takota, 2014 and Dirty 30, 2016. Television actress in numerous television series, including My Drunk Kitchen, 2011-2015; Vlogbrothers, 2012-2016; and 16-Bit High School, 2014-present. Producer for numerous television series, including Words with Girls, 2012-2014; My Drunk Kitchen, 2013; Pizza John, 2013; Camp Takota, 2014; and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, 2016. Former proofreader at a translation firm.
AWARDS:Streamy Award Best Female Performance: Comedy, My Drunk Kitchen, 2013; Streamy Award Best Collaboration, Epic Rap Battles of History, 2015.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Hannah Hart is an actress, producer, and writer. She has appeared in both films and on television shows and has been the producer or assistant producer for several television series.
Hart rose to prominence in 2011 with the success of her YouTube show, My Drunk Kitchen, which features Hart getting drunk while cooking and has amassed a following of over 2.5 million viewers. Hart explains that the series’ success was accidental, as she had uploaded the first video for a friend rather than to seek out followers.
Following My Drunk Kitchen’s success, Hart has embarked on an acting career, performing in films such as Camp Takota and Dirty 30. She has also made appearances in televisions series and mini-series, including 16-Bit High School and Vlogbrothers. Hart has also served as an executive or associate producer for a number of series and mini-series. She lives in Los Angeles.
My Drunk Kitchen
Hart’s debut book, My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut, is part memoir, part cookbook. The book includes drink suggestions and recipes, some of which are real and some of which are jokes, as well as cooking tips, photos, and musings on life lessons. The book also includes personal essays in which Hart takes humorous look back at her bumpy journey to adulthood and her explorations of her sexuality and love.
The book is split into four sections: “Kitchen Basics,” “Adultolescence,” “So This Is Love,” and “Family and the Holidays.” “So This Is Love,” explores love through food, including recipes such as “Brothel Sprouts” and “Sad Thai.” Hart spikes her recipes with insights and advice about love and relationships. “Adultolescence” offers advice for sticking up for oneself, while “Family and the Holidays” includes tips for maneuvering uncomfortable conversations with family during the holidays. Hart shares her own experiences with these topics, such as coming out as a lesbian to her father and figuring out how to talk honestly to conservative family members about romance. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described the book as “a rollicking, tongue-in-cheek guidebook to discovering one’s own route through life.”
Buffering
In her memoir, Buffering, Hart reflects on her life and what has led to her current status as a public figure. The book consists of essays covering a range of topics, such as mental health, poverty, religion, sexuality, and friendship, Partly written from memory, Buffering also draws on journals that Hart kept over the years. The book’s title signifies the time that Hart has spent maintaining her boundaries, thus giving herself time to process her life experiences before sharing them publicly.
Hart presents the individuals in her life as complex, multifaceted people, rather than categorizing them as good or bad. Both her mother and father play major roles. Hart was raised in a low-income household by her mother, a diagnosed schizophrenic. As a child of a mentally ill parent, Hart speaks candidly about the flawed thought processes that a person from her background can experience, such as twisted logic. She recalls how her mother’s mental illness manifested itself through erratic behavior and failing to serve family meals. Hart also details the difficult process of getting her mother, who had occasionally experienced homelessness, into a treatment facility. Much of this process involved navigating a complex court system to get her mother the help she needed.
Hart’s father is a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Hart shares the difficulties she experienced in trying to understand her own sexuality within the religious environment of his side of the family. She had denied her sexuality for many years. When Hart eventually came out to her father, she was met with very little empathy. Hart’s sister, Naomi, makes many appearances in the book. The sisters learned to turn to each other for support whenever their mother’s illness became too difficult to handle alone.
Hart also reveals her struggle with drugs and attempts at self-harm. She reflects on the deeply ingrained homophobia and self-hate she has felt and how she eventually overcame these feelings. Healing is a major focus of the book, and Hart goes into considerable detail about how she learned to control unhealthy behavior patterns through cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.
One of the Hart’s primary messages is that things are not always as they seem. A person may appear happy and well-adjusted, but this may not be the case. Andrea Kiliany Thatcher in Geekadelphia wrote, “The pure breadth and depth of Hart’s experiences are what makes this a meaty and compelling read.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2014, review of My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut.
Library Journal, October 15, 2014, Ginny Wolter, review of My Drunk Kitchen, p. 113.
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2016, review of Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, p. 62.
ONLINE
Buffering Web site, http://deystreet.harpercollins.com/bufferingbook (August 11, 2017).
Entertainment Weekly, http://ew.com (October 17, 2016), Ruth Kinane, review of Buffering.
Geekadelphia, http://www.geekadelphia.com (November 16, 2016), Andrea Kiliany Thatcher, review of Buffering.
Her Campus, http://www.hercampus.com (November 11, 2016), Alexandra Quilici, review of Buffering.
Imdb, http:/www.imdb.com (August 11, 2017), short biography and listing of film and television credits.
LA Weekly, http://www.laweekly.com (September 2, 2014), Sara Rashkin, review of My Drunk Kitchen.
New Orleans Review, http://www.neworleansreview.org (August 11, 2017), Samantha Capaldo, review of Buffering.
Persephone Magazine, http://persephonemagazine.com (November 13, 2014), review of My Drunk Kitchen.
Self Help Hipster, http://theselfhelphipster.com (June 12, 2015), review of My Drunk Kitchen.
Hannah Hart
Biography
Showing all 6 items
Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (1) | Personal Quotes (1)
Overview (3)
Date of Birth 2 November 1986, San Francisco, California, USA
Nickname Harto
Height 5' 7" (1.7 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Hannah Hart was born on November 2, 1986 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Camp Takota (2014), Dirty 30 (2016) and 16-Bit High School (2014).
Trivia (1)
Best friends with Grace Helbig and Mamrie Hart.
Personal Quotes (1)
Nobody is wired wrong, because there is no wrong and right in the way we are.
Known For
Camp Takota
Camp Takota
Allison Henry
(2014)
Dirty 30
Dirty 30
Charlie
(2016)
16-Bit High School
16-Bit High School
Maria
(2014)
Vlogbrothers
Vlogbrothers
Herself
(2012-2016)
Show Show all | | Edit
Filmography
Jump to: Actress | Producer | Writer | Director | Soundtrack | Editor | Self | Archive footage
Hide HideActress (14 credits)
2016 Dirty 30
Charlie
2016 Not Too Deep with Grace Helbig (TV Series)
- Hannah & Mamrie & DIRTY 30! (2016)
2016 Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (TV Mini-Series)
Judy / Dyna Girl
- Episode #1.1 (2016) ... Judy / Dyna Girl
- Episode #1.8 (2016) ... Judy / Dyna Girl
- Episode #1.7 (2016) ... Judy / Dyna Girl
- Episode #1.6 (2016) ... Judy / Dyna Girl
- Episode #1.5 (2016) ... Judy / Dyna Girl
Show all 8 episodes
2015 Oscar's Hotel for Fantastical Creatures (TV Mini-Series)
Queen Bee
- Art Attack (2015) ... Queen Bee
2014 Rubberhead (TV Movie)
Bride 4 (segment "Absorption")
2014 Epic Rap Battles of History (TV Series short)
Bonnie Parker
- Romeo and Juliet vs. Bonnie and Clyde (2014) ... Bonnie Parker
2014 16-Bit High School (TV Series)
Maria
- Goombas Are People Too (2014) ... Maria (voice)
- Mega Kid Brings a Blaster to School (2014) ... Maria (voice)
- Excite Biker Gang (2014) ... Maria (voice)
- Worship Kratos or Die (2014) ... Maria (voice)
- Mega Kid Vs Dr. Wirey (2014) ... Maria (voice)
Show all 12 episodes
2014 The Most Popular Girls in School (TV Series)
Mrs. Matthews
- Boobs Boobs Boobs (2014) ... Mrs. Matthews (voice)
- Role Play (2014) ... Mrs. Matthews (voice)
- Parent Teacher Conference (2014) ... Mrs. Matthews (voice)
2014 Camp Takota
Allison Henry
2012-2014 Words with Girls (TV Series)
Hannah
- Refusal (2014) ... Hannah
- Mimicry (2012) ... Hannah
- Homophobic (2012) ... Hannah
- Token (2012) ... Hannah
- Gussy (2012) ... Hannah
2013 Ladies of Rap (TV Series)
Hannah Hart
- Food Foxes (2013) ... Hannah Hart
2012-2013 MyMusic (TV Series)
Hipster Techno
- The End?! (2013) ... Hipster Techno
- Diabolical Plan (2012) ... Hipster Techno
- New Staff?! (2012) ... Hipster Techno
2012 The Flipside (TV Series short)
- Horrible Job Interview (2012)
2012 Red vs. Blue: Season 10 (Video)
Girlie (voice)
Hide Hide Producer (4 credits)
2016 Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (TV Mini-Series) (executive producer - 8 episodes)
- Episode #1.1 (2016) ... (executive producer)
- Episode #1.8 (2016) ... (executive producer)
- Episode #1.7 (2016) ... (executive producer)
- Episode #1.6 (2016) ... (executive producer)
- Episode #1.5 (2016) ... (executive producer)
Show all 8 episodes
2014 Camp Takota (executive producer)
2012-2014 Words with Girls (TV Series) (associate producer - 5 episodes)
- Refusal (2014) ... (associate producer)
- Mimicry (2012) ... (associate producer)
- Homophobic (2012) ... (associate producer)
- Token (2012) ... (associate producer)
- Gussy (2012) ... (associate producer)
2013 My Drunk Kitchen (TV Series) (producer - 1 episode)
- Pizza John (2013) ... (producer)
Hide Hide Writer (1 credit)
2013-2015 My Drunk Kitchen (TV Series) (2 episodes)
- No Quitter Fritters (2015)
- Pizza John (2013)
Hide Hide Director (1 credit)
2013-2015 My Drunk Kitchen (TV Series) (2 episodes)
- No Quitter Fritters (2015)
- Pizza John (2013)
Hide Hide Soundtrack (1 credit)
2014 Camp Takota (performer: "Camp It Up") / (writer: "Camp It Up")
Hide Hide Editor (1 credit)
2013 My Drunk Kitchen (TV Series) (1 episode)
- Pizza John (2013)
Hide Hide Self (51 credits)
2017 FANtasies (TV Series)
Herself
- Paging Dr. Hart (2017) ... Herself
2014-2017 @midnight (TV Series)
Herself / Herself - Contestant
- February 16, 2017 LIVE (2017) ... Herself
- Episode #3.160 (2016) ... Herself
- Episode #2.86 (2014) ... Herself - Contestant
- Episode #2.30 (2014) ... Herself
2016 Project for Awesome 2016 (TV Movie)
Herself
2016 YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge (Video short)
Herself
2016 The Star Wars Show (TV Series short)
Herself - YouTuber & Author
- Hannah Hart, Rogue One: Recon Event, and Fans' Favorite Star Wars Books (2016) ... Herself - YouTuber & Author
2016 Clevver Now (TV Mini-Series)
Herself
- Normani's In, Miley's 'Out' (2016) ... Herself
- Gigi Fights Back! (2016) ... Herself
2016 Harry (TV Series)
Herself
- Actor Ken Leong/"Dirty 30" Cast/Mom Inventor Picture This Wearable Art Clothing Line! (2016) ... Herself
2016 Made in Hollywood (TV Series)
Herself
- The Magnificent Seven/Storks/Queen of Katwe/Dirty 30 (2016) ... Herself
2016 Last Call with Carson Daly (TV Series)
Herself
- Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart & Hannah Hart/Peter Bjorn & John/Scout Durwood & Jessica Rothe (2016) ... Herself
2016 The Daily Show (TV Series)
Herself
- Hannah Hart (2016) ... Herself
2016 Hollywood Today Live (TV Series)
Herself
- Rutina Westley/Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart & Mamrie Hart (2016) ... Herself
2016 Cupcake Wars (TV Series)
Herself - Contestant
- Celebrity: Twister (2016) ... Herself - Contestant
2016 Beer and Board Games (TV Series documentary)
Herself
- Dick - Moby Dick-based Card Game (2016) ... Herself
2016 Food Network Star (TV Series)
Herself - Guest Judge
- Room Service Revenge (2016) ... Herself - Guest Judge
2016 Ro's Life (TV Series short)
Herself
- Bloopers with Guests! (2016) ... Herself
2016 Ask a Badass with Elizabeth Banks (TV Series)
Herself
- Hannah Hart (2016) ... Herself
2016 8th Annual Shorty Awards (Video)
Herself - Presenter
2013-2016 YouTubers React (TV Series)
Herself
- Youtubers React to ASMR (2016) ... Herself
- Youtubers React to K-Pop #4 (2016) ... Herself
- YouTubers React to Damn Daniel Compilation (2016) ... Herself
- YouTubers React to Weirdest Video You Will EVER SEE! Guaranteed! (2015) ... Herself
- YouTubers React to Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2014) ... Herself
Show all 9 episodes
2013-2016 Vlogbrothers (TV Series documentary)
Herself
- 47 Youtubers Laugh Without Smiling (2016) ... Herself
- Loving Loving Things in Los Angeles (2016) ... Herself
- Thoughts from Yachts (2015) ... Herself (uncredited)
- Tyler, Ingrid, Troye, Hannah, Mandy, Jenn, and Rosianna Visit Paper Towns (2014) ... Herself
- Million Dollar Ideas (2013) ... Herself (uncredited)
Show all 10 episodes
2016 Larry King Now (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Hannah Hart (2016) ... Herself - Guest
2015 Project for Awesome 2015 (TV Movie)
Herself
2015 Nerdy Nummies (TV Series)
Herself
- Fallout 4 Nuka Cola (2015) ... Herself
2011-2015 My Drunk Kitchen (TV Series)
Herself
- Ice Cream (Sand)Witches Ft. Rosanna Pansino (2015) ... Herself
- No Quitter Fritters (2015) ... Herself
- Sea Bass (Ft. Lance Bass) (2014) ... Herself
- The Harthwich! (2014) ... Herself
- Rough NY Cheesecake (2013) ... Herself
Show all 43 episodes
2015 The Grace Helbig Show (TV Series)
Herself - Host
- Dwayne the Rock Johnson & Hannah and Mamrie Hart (2015) ... Herself - Host
2015 Good Morning America (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Episode dated 27 April 2015 (2015) ... Herself - Guest
2015 Song Biscuits (TV Series)
Herself
- The Cat's 9 Lives Song (2015) ... Herself
2015 Drama King (TV Series)
Herself
- Selena Gomez REBOUNDS with ZEDD! (2015) ... Herself
2014 Project for Awesome 2014 (TV Movie)
Herself
2014 Turn Down for 2014 (Video short)
Herself
2014 The Chew (TV Series)
Herself - My Drunk Kitchen
- Chic Eats (2014) ... Herself - My Drunk Kitchen
2014 Untold with Maria Menounos (TV Series)
Herself
- Hollywood Heroin; Instafame (2014) ... Herself
2014 Good Mythical Morning (TV Series)
Herself
- That's What She Said Game Ft. Hannah Hart (2014) ... Herself
2014 Picture Day (TV Mini-Series)
Herself
- Hannah Hart's Sexy Bieber Re-Do (2014) ... Herself
2014 In Bed with Joan (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Hannah Hart (2014) ... Herself - Guest
2014 TakePart Live (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Episode #3.4 (2014) ... Herself - Guest
2014 Epic Gaming Time (TV Series)
Herself
- Just Dance 4 (2014) ... Herself
2014 Top Bunk: The Making of Camp Takota (Documentary)
Herself
2014 mental_floss: The List Show (TV Series documentary short)
Herself - Host
- 29 Misconceptions About Alcohol (2014) ... Herself - Host
2014 Tell a Friend Get Covered (TV Movie)
Herself - Host
2014 Takei's Take (TV Series)
Herself
- George Takei and Hannah Hart Talk Crowdfunding (2014) ... Herself
2013 Katie Chats (TV Series)
Herself
- Buffer Festival Interviews (2013) ... Herself
2012-2013 Chris Hardwick's All-Star Celebrity Bowling (TV Series)
Herself
- Nerdist vs. Vsauce (2013) ... Herself
- Nerdist vs. Chefs (2012) ... Herself (as Hanna Hart)
2013 Vaginal Fantasy Book Club (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Tipping the Velvet (2013) ... Herself - Guest
2013 The Mythical Show (TV Series)
Herself
- One Direction Caption Fail, Hannah Hart (2013) ... Herself
2013 TableTop (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Formula D (2013) ... Herself - Guest
2013 Tweet Out (TV Series)
Herself
- Hanna Hart (2013) ... Herself
2013 Take Five (TV Series)
Herself
- Hannah Hart (2013) ... Herself
2012 Please Subscribe (Documentary)
Herself
2012 Rewind YouTube Style 2012 (Video short)
Herself (as MyHarto)
2012 Dork Fork (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- Die Harder ... Herself - Guest
2012 The Flog (TV Series)
Herself - Guest
- The Flog at VidCon 2012! (2012) ... Herself - Guest
Hide Hide Archive footage (4 credits)
2016 Ro's Life (TV Series short)
Herself
- 2015 Recap Video! (2016) ... Herself
2012-2015 Vlogbrothers (TV Series documentary)
Herself
- P4A 2015 - Condensed Soup (2015) ... Herself
- Announcing VidCon 2016! June 23 - 25 (and Pizzamas 2015!) (2015) ... Herself (uncredited)
- BUTFARTMAN Is Coming to Town! (2014) ... Herself
- Announcing VidCon 2015! - Pizzamas Day 9 (2014) ... Herself (uncredited)
- Best Moments of the Project for Awesome (2013) ... Herself (uncredited)
Show all 8 episodes
2014 Frontline (TV Series documentary)
Herself - Internet Personality
- Generation Like (2014) ... Herself - Internet Personality
2013 TableTop (TV Series)
Herself
- Shadows Over Camelot (2013) ... Herself (uncredited)
Awards
Showing all 2 wins and 1 nominations
The Streamy Awards
2016 Nominated
Streamy Award Best Actress
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (2016)
2015 Won
Streamy Award Best Collaboration
Epic Rap Battles of History (2010)
Shared with:
Nice Peter
Epic Lloyd
Grace Helbig
For "Romeo and Juliet vs Bonnie and Clyde"
2013 Won
Streamy Award Best Female Performance: Comedy
My Drunk Kitchen (2011)
The wildly popular YouTube personality and author of the New York Times bestseller My Drunk Kitchen is back! This time, she’s stirring up memories and tales from her past. By combing through the journals that Hannah has kept for much of her life, this collection of narrative essays deliver a fuller picture of her life, her experiences, and the things she’s figured out about family, faith, love, sexuality, self-worth, friendship and fame. Revealing what makes Hannah tick, this sometimes cringe-worthy, poignant collection of stories is sure to deliver plenty of Hannah’s wit and wisdom, and hopefully encourage you to try your hand at practicing reckless optimism.
"Hello, my darlings! I am incredibly pleased to present BUFFERING: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded!
As a big fan of memoirs, I wanted to try my hand at writing about the events of my life that deserve a little more consideration than can be accomplished in 140-characters or a 6-minute vlog. Now on the cusp of turning 30, I'm ready to share some parts of my life that I haven't shared before. Before, it was all about privacy, process and time. And now the time has come! I’m ready to put myself out there, for you.
I'm a little nervous about all these vulnerable words going into the world, these tales about my love life, the wrestling I’ve done with faith, how I feel about sex and my family and myself. I’ve had a lot of trials, a lot of errors, but also a lot of passion. Here’s the thing--I've always found comfort in the stories shared by others, so I hope my stories, now that I feel ready to tell them, will bring you some comfort too.
And when you read this please remember: Buffering is just the time it takes to process.
Love,
Hannah Hart"
My Drunk Kitchen creator Hannah Hart on life as a YouTube star
by Kaitlyn Tiffany Oct 19, 2016, 10:00am EDT
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Courtesy of Hannah Hart
If there’s a go-to model for serendipitous YouTube stardom it’s Hannah Hart. Her My Drunk Kitchen YouTube series (which, as the title suggests, features her getting drunk and cooking), has over five years amassed 2.5 million followers. On her upward trajectory, she’s published a cookbook, starred in a movie, gone on tour, judged Food Network shows, and, most recently, written a memoir called Buffering.
One might guess Hannah Hart aspired for celebrity. But according to her, it all started by accident.
My Drunk Kitchen is a show that would never get off the ground in 2016: a girl using a cruddy webcam to film herself getting drunk and stuffing croutons into a Cornish game hen is the type of friendly, intimate weirdness that is now commodified and prepackaged by web video production teams.
Hart got in on the ground floor, before YouTube became this highly curated land of sponsored content, late night TV clips, and Vevo view tickers. In 2011, weird was good and a little bit sad was even better. In 2016, her followers are still hanging out with her in the kitchen, probably in part because it’s a holdover from a better time (and Hart is still very, very funny).
The Verge spoke to her recently about why it was time to write about her life, how fame makes you responsible for other people, and why she’ll never stop getting drunk and making food.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How did you start making the My Drunk Kitchen videos?
In early 2011, I moved from San Francisco to New York to be a proofreader at a translation firm. I was working nights and weekends because my specialty was East Asian languages. One day I was Gchatting with a friend of mine because Gchat had just added a video feature and I had just gotten a laptop with a camera in it for the first time. My friend, who was my roommate, was like “Man, I miss you, I miss just hanging out, you’ve been gone three months.” And I was like “I miss you too, I’m gonna make a video for you right now where I just do a cooking show and get drunk and cook.”
So, I opened up Photo Booth, recorded it onto Photo Booth, imported it into iMovie, chopped it up and sent it to her.
So you put in on YouTube, or she put it on YouTube?
I sent it to her via YouTube, because that is a way you send video files. There was like Send File or something like that [on Mac] but she didn’t even have a Mac. And remember when you had to convert files to work on different [vide players]? So I put it on YouTube so she could watch it.
I really can’t imagine something like that today going viral.
It also didn’t go viral by today’s standards. My Drunk Kitchen episode one didn’t get a million views, it got like 80,000. And I was like “WHAT?” It was truly bizarre. But then people were like, “This is my new favorite show on YouTube” and I was like “... show on YouTube. What are you talking about?” I wasn’t a fan of YouTube culture, I didn’t know that people like the Fine Brothers existed at all. I didn’t know that people were putting shows online.
It’s become very common for people to say that the Wild West days of YouTube are over. Do you think that’s true? If you started My Drunk Kitchen today, what would happen?
I think that one of the reasons that I’m so grateful for the channel and for the community and the way it’s evolved to this point is that in 2011 it was still so not intentional and people didn’t really have goals of becoming a quote-unquote YouTube Star. So, now I think the landscape is pretty oversaturated in terms of the amount of people who are on it. That being said, I think if your goal is to be famous then I don’t know if there’s ever any amount of views that’s going to be satisfying to you. When I started on YouTube, people were making stuff because we were like “Hey, cool we have this free space to make stuff.” Now people are like, “If I don’t get a million views, it’s not a success.” And that makes me sad, for the current creator’s space.
Do you think YouTube is less of an accurate cultural cross-section than it was eight years ago?
It’s an entertainment platform now. But the good news is that there are tons of really great, innovative, entertaining channels out there and ideas out there. I really want to stress that I love that YouTube allows space where people can just create content and post it. Like, have you ever watched Hydraulic Press Channel?
Yes! It’s so weird.
But it’s so satisfying! There would never be, there’s no room for that on television. No one would ever make that a TV show. But Hydraulic Press Channel is great. So in that way, YouTube is still a really valuable space even if it isn’t exactly what it used to be. That’s my official stance.
So for you, has YouTube Red changed the game at all?
Not at all. Nothing. I haven’t noticed any difference.
Has your community changed at all, aside from YouTube Red, just with the general growth of YouTube?
I think that the people that find the channel appealing or find what I do online appealing, it’s a specific kind of person. When they stumble across my channel they stay. There’s always going to be peaks and valleys of people that are interested but maybe they fall off a little bit. I always feel very fortunate because my community has been such a strong community and such a decent community. They’re all really nice peeps, and I’m really proud of the space we’ve made.
Have you had any fan interactions that really stand out?
All the time, constantly. I feel really fortunate in that the community that’s drawn to my channel are really good, decent, want-to-share people. During meet and greets there’s always a moment where I’m like “Oh my god, I’ve been given such a gift to hang out with these people and talk to them, this is such a blessing.”
When I posted my coming out video in 2012, I got an email that was from this dad in Nebraska and he was like “Me and my family watch your show, we love to watch My Drunk Kitchen but we don’t accept homosexuality. We had no idea you were homosexual. Now you’ve given us something to talk about.” And that was it. I was like, okay, think about it. A lot of people I think probably said, “Wait a minute, I really like this Hannah person and she’s a lesbian? But she seemed so nice!” It’s nice to be able to expand someone’s worldview.
Good for that dad! I hope... depending on how his conversation went.
Fingers crossed, I hope everything turned out okay!
What I love about My Drunk Kitchen is that I feel like it embraces the way that loneliness can be sad but can also be creative and productive and joyful. What do you think broadly people find appealing about just watching someone get drunk and cook?
I like to think of it like this: if YouTube is a house party, there’s going to be different parts of a house party that appeal to different people. When you walk in the door and you see people break-dancing in the living room, you’re going to look at it and be like “Wow, those people are break-dancing.” That’s one of those popular, big, you-can’t-resist-looking-at-it types of channels. There are going to be people who are more like, talking shit, saying “I feel this about this!” And then there would be people playing games, people around beer pong, stuff like that. My channel is for the people who want to hang out in the kitchen. That’s where I hang out when I’m at a party. If I’m at a house party I go into the kitchen because it’s a little bit quieter, you’re still drinking, you’re having fun, but it’s kind of a space where you have good conversations. It’s that quality that makes it more appealing than just the drinking and just the comedy, I think it’s the intimacy.
So how did you realize, I can do this, this could be my thing, and I’m going to dedicate time to it?
It was never like that. It was more like, “Oh, cool, that was kind of fun, I can make another?” Two and a half weeks later I posted another one. And then I was like “Cool! I can make another.” Then two and a half weeks after that I was like “I don’t really want to be known for being drunk,” so I made a video that wasn’t about that. And that was it. I just enjoyed it more and more. It takes up more and more of your time. I took a plunge, I was like “I’m gonna get rid of my apartment so I don’t have to pay the rent, I’m gonna sleep on my friends’ couches, and I’m going to see if it’s going to go somewhere.” It wasn’t like “Great, I’m a superstar.” People always ask, “How did you know?” But I just want to shout it from the rooftops, sometimes you don’t know.
Has producing the show stayed pretty much the same since the beginning?
Before I came on this trip, I set up my camera in my kitchen, got drunk, and filmed a video that I’m going to post on Thursday. Every time I get interviewed by traditional media outlets, they’re always like “So your crew...” and I’m like “I don’t have a crew.” And they’re like “Really?” And I’m like “... have you watched it?” You think there’s a crew behind that? Like, somebody rolling sound? Maybe I wouldn’t have forgotten to turn the mic on so many times if that were the case.
Have you upgraded your setup?
It hasn’t changed since the second year. The first year of the channel, everything was on my webcam and I put my laptop on top of a stack of books. From there, I went and bought a camera and I put that camera on top of a stack of books. Now I have a tripod and a camera and a mounted microphone and I have lamps that I angle at the ceiling to get better light.
What has internet fame done to your life, good and bad?
It has changed my life completely in the way that it’s given me a platform and a great deal of purpose and responsibility. It’s kind of amazing because I am a de facto role model and public figure. I take that incredibly seriously, and so my job is to make the most out of my life and really try to be as sincere and sincerely happy and content as possible. At the end of the day, we’re all going through this journey. These are all of our blips of life right now, that’s it, this is what’s happening. It would be so disgraceful and disrespectful if I took an opportunity like this and I just wasted it on myself. If I was just like “Yeah, I’m gonna be a tragic celebrity.” I really feel like anyone who makes over six figures, just as an obligation, should go to therapy so they don’t bring their money and their issues into the rest of the world. Like, don’t be a narcissist at the top of your game because it just sets the bar. There are so many people who have so much power and have done so little personal development. Like, don’t bring your daddy issues into this. That’s fair, right?
“ANYONE WHO MAKES OVER SIX FIGURES, JUST AS AN OBLIGATION, SHOULD GO TO THERAPY”
Yeah, totally! Do you feel like a lot of this responsibility comes from how young the YouTube audience is?
It’s tough for me specifically because my channel is like, people ask “what’s your demographic,” and I’m like “I don’t know, 18 to 45.” I have a lot of people who are 18 to 25, 25 to 35, a split of men and women. It’s less categorizable than a lot of channels. I don’t want to be making content for any specific age group. I just want to make content for people.
Obviously you have a ton of different irons in the fire now. Do you think you’ll keep doing YouTube forever?
It’s kind of like saying, “Are you ever going to stop tweeting?”
I like to post Instagram photos, I like to tweet, I like to Tumble, I like to post to my Snapchat story, and I like to make videos and put them on the internet. There’s definitely peaks and valleys to how much time and physical energy I have to produce content. But the desire to produce content’s not something I think will go away.
So, in Buffering, your new memoir, are there a lot of stories your longtime fans haven’t heard or will it be familiar territory for them since you have always been so open on your channel?
It’s going to be a lot of unshared tales of a life fully loaded. People who have been with me since the beginning or people who watch the channel really regularly or follow my other work, I think it’s going to fully explain some questions they may have, but I think anyone who’s a fan of narrative memoir or has any interest in mental health or personal development will find this book interesting.
What made it feel like now’s the time to write a memoir?
Permission, really. I’ve always wanted to write this book, I studied literature in college and I’ve been journaling for over a decade. Buffering itself literally means, when you think of the buffering wheel what is that wheel signifying? It’s putting a boundary between you and what you’re trying to view, what’s being shared. Behind the wheel, there’s all this data being processed, all these images that are coming into frame, it’s getting ready to show you what it is. When the wheel goes away, it’s like, “Ta da! Here I am.” So, buffering is processing the data of my life that I’m now ready to share. This isn’t in the middle of a feeling, I’m not going off on a rant, I’m not like “I’ve just got a couple of things to say about this and that,” this is the most sincere effort I’ve made to make my adult life my own.
“THIS IS THE MOST SINCERE EFFORT I’VE MADE TO MAKE MY ADULT LIFE MY OWN.”
What was it like to write that?
It was really intense, I deal with a lot of personal topics in here. Growing up with very unusual circumstances, talking about my mother’s homelessness, my emancipation, my little sister being in the foster care system, my relationship with my father, the suicide of my step-sister, I mean there’s just so much shit in here. It was a very intense process, but also simultaneously I had to keep doing my entire career. I definitely will say that Buffering is like my heartbeat. I’ve never worked so hard on a single project and there’s nothing but myself in this. I’m excited to share it, but also obviously nervous.
YouTube feels like someplace where you see a lot more of that —
Frankness.
Who should read this book? Besides ideally, I guess everyone.
Every single person. It’s hard to say because it’s really hard not to sound self-aggrandizing in trying to say who should read this book. But I think anyone who’s trying to get the most out of their life should read this book, because I’m just sharing with you how I’ve gotten the most out of my life. Any people who have suffered a great deal of childhood trauma, there’s a lot, you know therapy is expensive and medication is expensive and I’ve been able to afford these gifts so I’m like “Hey, here’s what I learned and I’m just going to put this out there because not everybody can go to therapy every week.” This is just like really trying to share what I think have been invaluable resources in my life. And anyone looking for a good time!
I hope people read it. I am proud.
Hannah Hart’s memoir Buffering is on sale today.
'My Drunk Kitchen' YouTube Star Pens Essays About Her Past In 'Buffering'
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Rachel Martin talks to Hannah Hart about her YouTube series My Drunk Kitchen and about her book Buffering. Hart got famous for getting drunk and recording herself cooking a grilled cheese sandwich.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Maybe this sounds familiar. You've had a stressful day. You come home from work to make dinner or, this time of year, maybe some Christmas cookies. And when you're cooking, you pour yourself a drink - maybe two, maybe three.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
HANNAH HART: Well, hello. Welcome to "My Drunk Kitchen."
MARTIN: Hannah Hart does this for a living. Her YouTube series, "My Drunk Kitchen," started about five years ago. She shot a video on her laptop in her sister's kitchen. She was tipsy, cooking grilled cheese. And she forgot a not-so-minor ingredient.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
HART: So in this little cooking adventure, I don't actually have any cheese. So don't do that. Make sure you have - make sure you have cheese in your house.
MARTIN: The Food Network it is not, but "My Drunk Kitchen" has won millions of fans. We thought of Hart because it is the holidays, and people are doing a lot of cooking, making, say, eggnog.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
HART: Cinnamon - check. Nutmeg? I barely know Meg. I have cumin. (Singing) I am cumin and I need to be loved.
MARTIN: Hannah Hart joined us from our studios at NPR West.
Hi, Hannah.
HART: Hi, Rachel. How are you doing?
MARTIN: I'm good. Hannah, are you drinking right now?
HART: God, no. It's...
MARTIN: OK, just checking.
HART: ...The morning time (laughter).
MARTIN: I didn't know if the libations extended to radio interviews or you just...
HART: Oh, no.
MARTIN: ...Keep them to the kitchen.
HART: Well, I think it's pretty funny because the number-one assumption is that, you know, I'm a huge fan of drinking. But the honest truth is I'm just a lightweight, you know?
MARTIN: (Laughter).
HART: I just - it only takes me, like, a glass or two of wine, and I am having a great time.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
HART: I made "My Drunk Kitchen" back when I had moved from San Francisco to New York. I was a proofreader at a translation firm. And one of my friends was having a downswing in her depression, and so I sent her a funny video to make her laugh. And then I discovered a whole community of people that wanted me to make funny videos to make them laugh and sincere videos to make them think. And so now I have my channel, Harto, and I get to do "My Drunk Kitchen." I get to do an interview series I called "Tunesday," where you interview people and you sing. You improvise, over royalty-free tracks, your answers.
MARTIN: Wow.
HART: Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Yeah.
MARTIN: Let's talk a little bit more about your background because it's definitely something that you end up sharing a lot about, and it's not all funny, for sure.
HART: (Laughter). Well, you know what they say - truth, comedy, comedians, starkness, blah, blah, blah.
(LAUGHTER)
HART: I believe that is exactly what they say. There might be some hyphens in there.
MARTIN: Yeah, it's a direct quote. Your mom, you write in your latest book, which is called "Buffering" - and in it, you do write about growing up with a mother who's schizophrenic.
HART: Yeah, I mean, you know, I actually - fun fact - it's actually pretty good to avoid the term schizophrenic because it's - it's not PC. It's like defining somebody by their illness, you know? You don't call somebody with cancer a cancer, right? So someone who suffers from psychosis or schizoaffective disorders, they don't - it doesn't get better with time. So we grew up with a pretty - as I later found out - unique upbringing, which, as a child at the time, you do not think it is unique.
You think it is - it is the entire world (laughter). And then - yeah, and then I - you know, unfortunately, my mom's illness got worse, and she had a period of time of homelessness. And my sister and I have always been very conscious of trying to, you know, save our mother's life. And the reality is - is that the mental health system is - it's not broken. There's just a giant, gaping hole because here I am, an educated, white, wealthy, famous person, and it was incredibly hard to get my mother into care.
MARTIN: So like you mentioned, you've used your platform to talk about a whole range of issues. And you talk about personal things. I want to play a clip because this was something that got a whole lot of attention. This is you talking publicly about coming out. Let's listen to this, and we'll talk on the other side.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
HART: OK, so this is part one of the - hopefully - you know, series of my experience coming out being gay. Let's dive right in, kids. One of the number-one questions you guys give me is...
MARTIN: What was the process building up to that like?
HART: Oh, my God. You know, what's so funny is that I think I posted that video in 2012. And, you know, I write about the coming-out process in "Buffering: Unshared Tales Of A Life Fully Loaded" in depth. Like, I really go into it. I go into my homophobia, my father's religion, all this kind of, like, ingrained self-loathing, self-hate, denial stuff. And when I tried to condense it into that video, you know, it took me three times to record it, and I never watched it again.
MARTIN: Oh, really?
HART: It's still very raw because it was just something I tried to fight against so long - like, actively. Like, I tried to pray the gay away. It was just kind of, like, with everything that had gone on in our lives - trigger warning - like, you know, abuse and my sister's suicide - my stepsister's suicide. Like, with all this stuff that had really gone down, the last thing I wanted was to be gay. Are you kidding me (laughter)? So that - that process was long and involved.
MARTIN: What was the response to it? I mean, I'm sure you heard all kinds of stories from young people.
HART: Oh, man - phenomenal. It's just so great. You know, not only from young people, but one of the - one of the responses that really stuck out to me was I got this email from this, like, dad in Nebraska. And he was saying, we've been watching you online for - as a family, and we never knew you were a lesbian. And we don't approve of homosexuality, but you've really given us something to think about. And I was like, what? Here I had subversively, you know, broadened their minds because they didn't know that this friendly little person they liked in the kitchen happened to be a raging lesbian (laughter), you know?
MARTIN: What does the title mean to you now that you're in this different place? The word buffering is an evocative word, and it means something about getting to a place but not arriving. Are you still buffering?
HART: That's a good question. You know, buffering is that time where you are processing data, right? Buffering's that boundary - that little spinning wheel, that boundary that your computer puts up saying, I'm not ready to show you this yet. I'm still processing, and I'm working on it. I think that the issues I write about in "Buffering" are matters that I have come to terms with in a - in a new way, and I'm ready to move on to the next stage of my life. I'm ready to take child Hannah and take child self and be like, you did a great job, you know? Here you go. I'm an adult now. I'm going to take it from here.
MARTIN: Hannah Hart. You can find her on YouTube. She's also got a new book out called "Buffering: Unshared Tales Of A Life Fully Loaded." Hannah, thanks so much.
HART: Of course. Thanks for having me.
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My Drunk Kitchen’s Hannah Hart signs movie deal with Lionsgate
By William Hughes
POSTED FEB 16, 2017 AT 10:51 P.M.
(Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
(Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
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It’s the rare Newswire piece about a beloved YouTube star making headlines that doesn’t force us to us phrases like “laughed about the Nazis” or “paid people to hold up signs re: murdering all the Jews.” But we’re in luck tonight, with Variety reporting that Lionsgate has signed a new deal with non-terrible YouTube star Hannah Hart. Hart—best known for her massively popular My Drunk Kitchen series, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like—has signed a first-look deal with the studio, with her prospective first feature being billed as an LGBTQ romance.
Hart previously starred in the film Dirty 30, with fellow YouTubers Grace Helbig and Mamrie Hart. She’s also the author of two popular books, My Drunk Kitchen and Buffering: Unshared Tales Of A Life Fully Loaded, and is currently in production on a travel show for Food Network. Hart currently has roughly 5 million followers across all forms of social media, and—we can’t stress this enough—hasn’t made any jokes about murdering all the Jews recently, at least as far as we know. (Admittedly, we’re kind of grading on a curve at this point.)
Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
Publishers Weekly. 263.42 (Oct. 17, 2016): p62.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
Hannah Hart. Dey Street, $23.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-245751-6
In her debut memoir, comedian Hart, host of the YouTube show My Drunk Kitchen, delves deep into her past, sharing her experiences with family, mental illness, sexuality, friendship, and love. Although she is currently living the life of a public figure, a fact that she teasingly points out throughout the piece, Hart focuses on her past; its complexities, juxtapositions, and contradictions make up the bulk of her entertaining and honest story. Hart exposes the hardest parts of her life: being gay with a Jehovah's Witness father, growing up poor with a schizophrenic mother. These and other figures of her life could be easily demonized, but Hart allows them to emerge as complicated characters. Her paranoid mother is also intelligent, kind, gentle, and forgiving, and values family and art. Her homophobic and single-minded father gave her good home by certain standards, clean and with a fridge full of food. The topics are grim, but there is kindness in her story, and, most significantly, humor. Fans will be pleased that other stars such as comedian Grace Helbig make guest appearances, and, like a true role model, Hart uses her platform to raise awareness of the shortcomings of the current U.S. medical system in treating mental health. (Nov.)
Hart, Hannah. My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut
Ginny Wolter
Library Journal. 139.17 (Oct. 15, 2014): p113.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Hart, Hannah. My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut. It: HarperCollins. 2014.240p. photos. ISBN 9780062293039. $22.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062293046. COOKING
Started as a joke, the web-based series My Drunk Kitchen became a full-blown YouTube sensation in 2011, and now the popular videos has spawned a book. Similar in tone to Amy Sedaris in her I Like You, debut author Hart uses humor, creativity, and food to guide her readers through life, love, and laughter. Hart's friendly and inviting style lends itself to a volume full of drunk humor, puns, rambling monologs, and small pearls of wisdom. This work does have recipes, but being the product of a tipsy cook, they range from just edible to comforting ("pizza cake" is created by stacking four or five cooked mini pizzas to form a "cake") to rambling nonrecipes. VERDICT Although the jokes don't always hit, humor fans, especially those of the YouTube series, will find plenty here to laugh at.--Ginny Wolter, Toledo-Lucas Cty. P.L.
Wolter, Ginny
Hart, Hannah: MY DRUNK KITCHEN
Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 15, 2014):
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Hart, Hannah MY DRUNK KITCHEN It Books/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $22.99 8, 12 ISBN: 978-0-06-229303-9
Transplanted New Yorker Hart's idea of creating a fake cooking show began as a joke for a friend in California. At last count, her YouTube channel, "My Drunk Kitchen," had tallied more than 66 million views. Hart's "cookbook" will surely enlarge her audience and please her fans. The author, who dedicates the book to "reckless optimists," has been featured in numerous magazines including Time, LA Weekly and Marie Claire, as well as on CBS News, and her 2012 YouTube documentary "Please Subscribe" won the 2013 Steamy Award for Best Female Performance in a Comedy. Hart's wacky sense of humor carries on in this collection of drink suggestions, which includes fun recipes, cooking tips, photos, quotes and life lessons. Whether the author is elaborating on the basics of kitchen improvisation and "filling your heart as well as your stomach," embracing the bumpy journey toward adulthood, or exploring the boundaries of love and sexuality, Hart remains entertaining. In the section entitled "So This Is Love," the author includes recipes for Hot-Crossed Bunz, Heart-Beet Salad, Brothel Sprouts and Sad Thai. "I feel like the people we find ourselves drawn to are somehow reflections of the love we were given (or denied) as children," she writes. "And this could manifest as unconditional loyalty or devotion to people who don't necessarily classify as healthy and/or functional human beings." Hart devotes another section to coping with family during the holidays. The author's recipe for Trifle Troubles alludes to the trauma of leaving the comfort of your adult life and revisiting "the emotional baggage of your childhood," while Let's Get Grilled (About Your Life Choices) traverses the troubled terrain of communicating with a less-than-understanding father "who never achieved his goals." A rollicking, tongue-in-cheek guidebook to discovering one's own route through life.
Book Review: Hannah Hart's Buffering
By Alexandra Quilici
Posted Nov 11 2016 - 09:06pm
Tagged HANNAH HART YOUTUBE BOOK BUFFERING MY DRUNK KITCHEN MENTAL HEALTH HOMOSEXUALITY SCHIZOPHRENIA
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I have always been a sucker for buying my favorite YouTuber’s books. There’s been a lot of flack in the past years for how many online creators suddenly have writing skills and are able to publish best-selling books (scandals of ghostwriting and terrible books have plagued fans for months). However, Hannah Hart, known for her channel Harto and online series My Drunk Kitchen, published her second book recently and I knew I would have to get it. Not only is she hilarious, smart, and proven to be a good writer, but this book was an inspiring collection of essays about her entire life. Hannah had previously confessed to having a difficult childhood but had never gone into much detail - this book, however, is mind-opening in areas of mental health, poverty, religion, sexuality, friendship, and more.
By far, the strongest aspect in the book is her frank discussion about mental health. Her mom is schizophrenic, and her childhood was riddled with missed meals, cockroaches, and all the gritty details of living with someone who is severely mentally ill. It’s eye opening to say the least, especially as she later goes on to talk about the long, arduous court process to get her mother into a home and how hard it is to do that with our current court system laws.
Not only will this book teach you a thing or two about our mental health care system, but it could also really help someone who feels a little lost. Her struggle with growing up in a fear-mongering religion coupled with the realization that she is gay makes for both sweet and tearful moments. Her experiences may be exclusively unique to her, but the message is still incredibly heartfelt and insightful.
Of course there are fun gags as well - her trials and tribulations with comedy, her tattooing experience with best friend Grace Helbig, and airplane travel tips for the “casual travel assh*le.”
The growth of Hannah’s story-telling skills have grown exponentially as her first book, a cookbook, can be described more as a direct translation from her videos in book formation, but her second is an introspective look at the honest trial and tribulations of life.
A recommendation for anyone looking to read a fascinating life story that evolved into an eventual creative success and a platform for millions.
*None of the images belong to Her Campus or the author
Hannah Hart's 'Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded': Read an excerpt
EW also chats with the ‘My Drunk Kitchen’ star about her new memoir
RUTH KINANE@RUTHIEKINANE
POSTED ON OCTOBER 17, 2016 AT 12:00PM EDT
TODD WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGES FOR ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Whether she’s in the kitchen prepping some pasta and chugging pinot for her YouTube show My Drunk Kitchen, or getting passionate with Bill Nye on While The Water Boils, charismatic and hilarious digital influencer Hannah Hart always has worthwhile tidbits of advice to share. So naturally, her memoir, Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, is a must read.
The crazy-popular social media star spills secrets and tales from journals she’s kept over the years, touching on topics such as faith, sexuality and self-worth. Plus, her puns are guaranteed to be Hart-felt. Below, Hart details her new memoir and previews an exclusive excerpt of Buffering. But first, pour yourself a glass (or three) of wine.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your new book, Buffering is a memoir of your life to date. I’m sure you’re very excited for everyone to read it, but are there some nerves that come with opening up and sharing so much with readers for the first time?
Hannah Hart: I am thrilled and terrified. Big time nerves. It’s really exciting because I feel a great responsibility to tell my story given the platform that I have, and to the people that are willing to read it, and the people that are even just curious to read it. But there is a really big sense of vulnerability that you feel by putting yourself out there in this way. We always have the assumption that if people don’t care it’s because they just don’t know, but then if you write your whole life story and put it out there and there’s nothing, it’s like, well, I guess they just don’t care.
You studied literature in college. Was writing always something you wanted to do? Back then, YouTube videos might not have been how you expected to gain this platform for self-expression.
One hundred percent. I’m a huge, huge fan of writing. I’m a huge fan of memoirs. I’ve gotten so much from reading other people’s stories — from those who are willing to share them. Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle is just phenomenal, and I always had a dream that one day I would be able to write my own, and be able to share my own story. We have this time where you leave your adolescence behind and enter adulthood, and this book reflects the process of processing that and getting into the adult that you want to be.
Was the book born out of the journals you kept when you were growing up?
The journals were just entry points into periods of time. The journal is a device that we use to go into the experiences. I’ve written in journals my whole life, ever since I could write and record my private thoughts. So this collection is a decade of journals that I’ve used excerpts from to set a place in time. But all of the writing is completely original to the process of writing the book.
Were you always such an open person?
I was open to an extent. I was open about sharing experiences, in a way similar to reporting the news, but I didn’t want to share how I was processing them. The reason the book is called Buffering is because it’s about the time that I spent with a boundary up so I could internally process the things that I have to process in my life, before sharing the journey of how.
Buffering by Hannah Hart
Excerpt Pg. 15-16
I wish I hadn’t been so hasty when I was twenty, shoving our memories into garbage bags in my mom’s house. I regret not taking something for myself—an heirloom—whereas Naomi had the maturity and the foresight to salvage the things that were precious to her. But I suppose we can’t hold on to everything. Sometimes we have to start over and make new heirlooms for our children to eventually put into their own boxes or bags as they see fit.
But from the time I was a teenager I’ve kept a journal. I began journaling because of my mother. Initially I thought I could make some sense of her logic by transcribing and translating her thoughts. I figured that if I didn’t understand what she was saying, it was simply because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. If I could crack her code and learn to speak her language, we would find a way to communicate. I spent years recording my mother’s prose, word for word, and then looking for a purpose where there was none. But then eventually I found one. Because the habit of transcribing her thoughts led me to begin recording my own.
When I set out to write this book, I realized that although I didn’t save anything from our old house, my heirlooms have always been with me, in the form of the memories recorded in my journals. So this chapter and those that follow, and the journals that inspired them, are my inheritance. And now I’d like to pass them down to you.
Watch Hart read from another chapter her book in an exclusive video for Instant below. Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded is out now.
Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded by Hannah Hart [Book Review]
By Andrea Kiliany Thatcher | on November 16, 2016 | 0 Comment
Books Reviews
If you’re not familiar with Hannah Hart, she is a YouTube star with a popular and hilarious show My Drunk Kitchen and she has recently come out with a memoir “Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded.”
When I say she’s a YouTube star… she’s one of the original YouTube stars. She’s one of the first creators to turn the medium into a successful business and parlay it into a measure of fame.
I know what you’re thinking. “A YouTube star with a book. Pass.” I pass on these types of books a lot. But anyone familiar with Hart not only knows how absolutely hilarious she is and what a kind person she is, but also what a positive force for social justice she is. After a successful Hello Harto comedy tour in 2013, she traveled the country again in 2014 hosting 11 Have a Hart Days where she asked “hartosexuals” (the name of her fan community) to volunteer with her at food banks. This is just one way in which Hart puts her aggressive optimism into action, and one of the things that sets her apart from other YouTubers. Her relatability and girl-next-door charm surely have something to do with it, too.
bufferingBuffering is far from your average celebrity memoir or YouTuber lifestyle book. You get an inkling of this when you read that the book addresses topics like mental health, sexuality and self harm. I heard an interview where Hart said her publisher (HarperCollins) kept referring to the project as a humor book, and she would say hesitantly “…there’s funny parts.” And there are funny parts. But there are far more gut-wrenching accounts of what most of us would call child abuse and the subsequent PTSD that followed Hart and her siblings into adulthood, accounts of drug use and self harm that seem so difficult to resolve with the smiling, bubbling, infectiously positive personality you will find on Hart’s YouTube channel. Which really drives home the message that the face of mental health, the face of schizophrenia and homelessness (both of which Hart’s mother has suffered), the face of self-hating homophobia and self-harm can often be the smiling face of an acquaintance, friend or coworker who “you never would have guessed it” about.
I think this is Hart’s strongest message, whether it was intended or not. She talks about the healthcare system in America, she talks about the homophobic religious upbringing one side of her family fostered which lead to her denial of her own homosexuality for many years. She talks about getting out of unhealthy patterns and cognitive behavior therapy and meditation. And these are all well-written, poignant messages told in a way that will reach many readers who have probably not encountered these issues. But the biggest takeaway for me was how Hart shows the reader that you never know what’s going on behind the facade and what struggles a person is dealing with, and that lesson of empathy and kindness is very needed in the world right now.
This book should be required reading for anyone who works with children and youth, anyone who works in healthcare or mental health. Hart reveals heartbreaking thought patterns and the twisted logic the human brain can impose on a situation that would never occur to a person who grew up in a clean home with supervision and enough to eat. She heart-breakingly illustrates the flaws in our mental health and legal systems and points out that if it’s this hard for a now-wealthy, highly educated, white woman to navigate these systems how impossible it must be for individuals who don’t have those same advantages. It’s a lot for one book to take on. If it weren’t a memoir and all legitimately part of one life, I would perhaps have said an editor should have cut it back. But you can’t cut back a person’s life experiences and the pure breadth and depth of Hart’s experiences are what makes this a meaty and compelling read.
www.hannahhart.com
Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, by Hannah Hart. Dey Street Books, 2016. $24, 272 pages.
In the video announcing Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, a very anxious and excited Hannah Hart tells her YouTube viewers “there’s a lot of really fun, repressed shit in there.” Hart has been open since the announcement of her second book that she held very little back in this collection of autobiographical essays, and the “Trigger Warning” introduction serves as the book’s only warning to readers about the tales she shares about her journey with mental illness, sexuality, faith, fame, drug use, and self-harm. Though the topics have become more openly acceptable to talk about as of late, Hart’s honesty, unique circumstances, and awareness of the privilege that comes with being “white, wealthy, educated, [and] famous,” add a new voice to the discussion.
Her ability to create a sense of familiarity, making it feel as though she’s speaking directly to the reader, much like she does in her YouTube videos, is the best part of her storytelling. She first began her career on YouTube as a way to cheer up a friend, but quickly went viral. She has built her channel, “MyHarto,” and its over 2.5 million subscribers by getting drunk, cooking, and giving life advice, often in the form of puns, for her series “My Drunk Kitchen” every week. It’s evident in her writing that the experience from her time on YouTube has aided in creating that ease in telling stories. In many ways, Buffering feels like a more personal extension of her videos.
Buffering opens at the beginning of Hart’s life. She recounts her experiences growing up in an incredibly low-income home with a mother struggling with schizophrenia. In a footnote, she comments, “We call the illness ‘Annette’ and the happy memories ‘Mom.’” She then goes on to reflect on her relationship with her father, a Jehovah’s Witness, and his impact on her coming to terms with her sexuality, as well as the lack of empathy shown to her and her sister from their father and step-mother.
Hart touches on many important relationships throughout her life—her relationship with her stepfather and half-sister, her first girlfriend, and her friendships with other YouTubers—but the most significant is her relationships with her sister, Naomi. Naomi is present in nearly every chapter of the book. In the final chapter, titled “Fables,” she shares several stories from their childhood in an attempt to depict just how vital they were in each others’ lives, and settles on telling a story about a general and a monk; siblings from a cataclysmic “Good-Bad Witch” who grow to lead vastly different lives, but ultimately need each other to save their mother. After sharing the story, Hart writes, “…we started calling each other the General and the Monk. It was our way of forgiving each other and understanding the adults we had to become: a General [Hannah] powered by passion, a Monk [Naomi] cultivating patience in the face of pain.”
Her stories, no matter how dark, are enriched with puns and the advantage of looking back on the tales with an older perspective. In the chapter “(Un)packing a Punch,” Hart opens up for the first time publicly about her struggles with self-harm. She explains how she would punch walls when she was angry, and though she’s now learned to deal with her anger, she still struggles sometimes. After acknowledging that a journey to be better includes occasional failures, she writes, “I can’t beat myself up for that. PUN INTENDED.”
Puns come up a lot in Hart’s content. Her YouTube videos, Tweets, Instagram posts, and both of her books are full of quips about social media, food, and the darker parts of life. She uses puns and comedy as a way of coping with and processing the traumas and hardships of her past, and though they might not suit every reader, they act as a balance to the difficult-to-stomach realities of life.
Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, a pun itself, allows Hart to process the events of her childhood and gives her readers and viewers the opportunity to not feel alone. While her YouTube videos feel very personal, there’s a more emotional vibe about the book. The process of writing out such emotional tales is a more permanent way of release and processing, and that comes across well in Hart’s writing.
Hart uses these autobiographical essays to take the reader through her continuous journey of discovering who she is at thirty and how she navigates relationships, success, emotions, and the struggle to find boundaries while “operating in the age of the overshare.” The books ends with “Hannah’s List of Readings and References,” a list of resources that she has found helpful over the years, from self-help books to poetry, including I’m Not Sick I Don’t Need Help: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment by Xavier Amador, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames by Thich Nhat Hanh, and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.
The biggest take away is that without some boundaries and processing, it’s difficult to live a full life because, after all, “boundaries + processing = buffering.”
Samantha Capaldo is currently enrolled as an undergraduate at Loyola University New Orleans. Find her on Twitter @searchfornargls.
Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen Is a Fun Place to Visit but Don’t Eat the Food
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2014 AT 7:51 A.M. BY SARA RASHKIN
Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen Is a Fun Place to Visit but Don’t Eat the Food
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Hannah Hart shared her first My Drunk Kitchen video on YouTube for her best friend when they were on opposite sides of the country. While drinking several glasses of wine, she demonstrated how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. The video went viral, and the rest is Drunk History. No, that’s a different show — drunk narrators are enjoying a surge in popularity at the moment.
Hart, who currently lives in Los Angeles, has now been making My Drunk Kitchen for three years now this August Dey Street Books released her cookbook, My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut. You probably won’t find the book in the cooking section of your local bookstore — look for it in the humor section.
If you've seen the show, you might think this is a missed opportunity, since the web series actually does contain the occasional useful tip for making such problematic dishes as eggplant Parmesan and tackles culinary challenges like English toad in the hole (in one of the best episodes).
However, the book is not the same as the show. And the recipes included don't really make you think of moving the cookbook to the cooking section – these are recipes for Saltine nachos and cream cheese taquitos.
Mostly there are pages of Hart’s puns and lighthearted life advice. Hart's videos spoof cooking shows, but her book doesn't really spoof cookbooks; it's more of a comedic pep talk for her YouTube and Twitter fans, who are legion.
The cookbook is full of portraits of Hart, nicknamed Harto, in all her soft-butch beauty. (Some of her fans have dubbed themselves Hartosexuals.) But those photos combined with the hodgepodge of fonts and jokes scrawled on the page at different angles don’t completely deliver the spontaneity and charm of her shows, since improvising doesn’t come across the same on the page.
For one thing, some of Hart’s adventures in the kitchen are of the must-be-seen-to-be-believed variety, like in Season 1, Episode 8 when she tries to make ice cream in a sandwich bag. At the end of that episode, by the time our drunken host puts her bag of slush into the freezer, takes out a carton of store bought ice cream and jokes, “You should never be ashamed of yourself,” the moral feels earned.
In other episodes she faces problems like kitchens that are too small, dropped food, not having the right kind of pan, and cryptic recipes. These are the problems of home cooks everywhere and seeing Hart press on and deliver an endless stream of puns is fortifying and encouraging. A comedian chef is a wonderful thing, maybe even a necessary thing.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was a recent guest on My Drunk Kitchen and helped make one of the cookbook’s recipes, The Hartwich, a large meatball split in half with sandwich fillings inside. As they drop the meatballs into a baking dish Oliver says, “I’ve never cooked like this before – I mean rustic I love, but gravity cooking…” He does manage to make a tasty-looking sandwich, which Hart stops to photograph with her iPhone before recommending that Oliver consider giving cooking a try because he seems good at it.
Hart is good at cooking too, or at least good for cooking. And for cooks at their wits' end, Hart’s wit is great company. For those who are already fans of the host (and perhaps also for any college students who haven’t already learned the art of combining prepared foods) My Drunk Kitchen can bring Harto into your home and remind you to pour yourself a glass of wine and go for it, without taking yourself too seriously.
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Book Review: My Drunk Kitchen by Hannah Hart
Though I admit to not being all that well-versed in “My Drunk Kitchen” the video series, I still wanted to see how Hannah Hart’s humor translated into book form. I might have aged out of some of this life advice, but her enthusiasm and love of puns still won me over.
“[T]his book is about self-improvement and maybe it can improve itself as it goes along,” Hannah Hart writes in the introduction. “Has a cookbook ever been self-aware? If not, this may be one of the first occasions for it.”
My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking & Going With Your Gut uses food to talk about life, and as far as a standard definition of what a “cookbook” is, this isn’t that. The “recipes” contained within are more about making the best of what you have, and if you screw up in the process, oh well. Lesson learned! And of course, have yourself a tasty cocktail to get through the process.
The book is presented in four parts: Kitchen Basics, Adultolescence, So This Is Love, and Family and The Holidays. The Love section also includes break-ups (and the “recipe” Sad Thai, in which you order Thai delivery and cry into your beer), and the Family portion reveals more about Hart than the other sections. It has more to do with her dating women and how that makes holidays with conservative family complicated.
Each part concludes with a more text-heavy section discussing things like what alcohol does to your body (tidying up the irresponsibility issue some might take with her drinking — in which case, I’d ask why that person even picked up a book called My Drunk Kitchen in the first place), thoughts on eating alone, and why bananas are good.
A gif od the Ninth Doctor captioned "I like bananas. Bananas are good."
But are you looking for a coping mechanism to deal with the family that doesn’t involve copious amounts of secret drinking?
No?
Well, too bad! Because here is one of my favorite facts: Bananas are good for lowering anxiety!!!
Here’s why.
Bananas are kind like nature’s beta-blocker. A beta-blocker prevents adrenaline from latching onto your beta receptors. This keeps your blood pressure lower and keeps your heart at a steady rate, instead of going into turbo drive when you start to get stressed as a result of feeling anxiety. That’s physiology, buddy.
I also enjoy the recipe Latke Shotkes, since any person who drinks knows that potatoes are the wonder-food for sopping up booze. Hart suggests eating these mini-tot appetizers before heading out for the evening so that your stomach has an excellent starch-based coating. Cleaning out those shot glasses is probably a pain in the ass later, but hey, tiny food = better food, right?
…Which is exactly the point made by her Tiny Sandwiches entry:
For me, one of my main self-qualms is that I’m not the tallest person. But I’m also not by any means the shortest person either. However, for some unfortunate reason I often seem to find myself in the company of rather tall people. Women who average five-ten and men who average six feet. And in my mind’s eye I like to see myself as the height and width of a friendly lumberjack.
I’m not, but good things come in small packages and can bring you lots of tasty comfort. Just like having a tiny sandwich.
And it’s true! Tiny sandwiches, sliders, pizza bites – they’re all better, seemingly because they are tiny. It’s like some weird food law.
The cover of My Drunk Kitchen by Hannah HartThe point where I felt like I had aged out of some of the life advice came in the Adultolescence section, but that doesn’t mean it lacks valuable insights. It’s just that — well, I’m 31 with a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old, and I’m also quite comfortable with standing up for myself. There are also some points in the relationships section that don’t really apply to me either. Communicating your needs and loving people for their individuality are lessons I’ve already learned.
However, everyone needs this reminder from time to time:
You might not be at the standard of living that you aspire to achieve. But be patient. And sometimes eat some comfort food that you’ve sliced into a sushi shape.
See? Tiny food wins again.
In the family section, Hart alludes to her father’s discomfort with her being gay, and she talks about how people’s dislike of the holidays is probably because we revisit the baggage of our childhoods. In other words, some people have it easier than others. Again, she advises patience while also acknowledging that she doesn’t necessarily have it all figured out either. There are also some bonus recipes for coming out in “The Gayest Way Possible.”
If you’re looking for actual recipes and some sort of culinary insight, My Drunk Kitchen is not the book for you. But if your pun-loving twenty-something friend/sibling needs to know that it’s okay that she doesn’t really have this whole adulting thing worked out yet, it makes for an excellent gift. Pair it with her favorite boozy beverage, possibly also the book actually called Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown, and your holidays will be that much better.
Full Disclosure: It! Books (now Dey Street Books) sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair with my reviews.
Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen Book Review
my drunk kitchen book 1Final book of the (first!) Holy Trilogy: Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen. I saved it for last because I needed some extra time. I still have no idea if I like it.
I’m just gonna try to figure it out as I review. Come along.
my drunk kitchen book
DISCOVERY: Hannah Hart (see previous article) is one of my “I don’t know if I want to be you or if I want to be on you”-women. I watched a lot of her YouTube videos, especially like her collabs – especially the ones she does with Grace and/or Mamrie, and I LOVE her.
She’s funny, cute, knows how to deliver an inspiring message without going overboard and her tagline is Reckless Optimism. She’s awesome. I was excited about her book, and bought it last summer while I was on holiday and wanted to read some non-fiction. I got the ebook version for 10.99 on Bol.com*. The hardcover costs 23.99 there, but you can get it for 18.75 on Book Depository!
SUBJECT: Eating, drinking and going with your gut according to the tag line. In reality, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s about anything, really.
It features recipes, stories from Hannah’s life and relationships, and some non-sensical subchapters like ’10 Things Alchocol Alcohol Does To Your Body’. I cannot for the life of me see the bigger picture of this book.
KOOKINESS (1-10): In terms of Cookiness I give it a 1, because there is not one recipe in the entire book that I wanted to try. 9, because I really don’t understand this book (It’s a gag-book, I would say, but maybe that’s a huge insult. I don’t know.)
SELF HELP HIPSTER’S STAMP OF APPROVAL: Yikes. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but…no.
I feel horrible because I love Hannah*, but I don’t like her book. (Oh hey, guess I figured it out.)
Her book was too all over the place for me to get into, and to like.
She had some good lines, and some of the jokes and quotes are good. But the writing could get quite non-sensical, drifting off, jumping from topic to topic. To me that’s funny in videos, not so much in a book. I need structure.
Plus, I know it wasn’t supposed to be a ‘Real Cookbook’, but still, the recipes and food pictures made me lose my appetite. I liked NOTHING of whatever that food was.
FAVORITE QUOTES:
[After a story about Person A and Person B being very different people] “What matters is that both people aren’t judging themselves, or each other, which i really the only thing you can hope for while you’re trying to make it through adultolescence.”
“In your adultolescence, it is no longer cute to constantly comment on the things you hate about yourself.”
“JUST DO IT first and then tell people about it. Sometimes I find that discussing an idea before executing it can take the wind out of my sails a fair bit.”
“Just remember, sometimes it’s okay for the party to be over.”
“Destiny maybe isn’t just determination, but I’m sure that being open to working hard will help.”
“Remember, personality first. Then look for trust funds.”
“If someone is trying to do something nice for you, it’s best to just get them finish.”
“If you marinate in negative thought, you may just become a bitter regret stew that nobody will ever want to eat again.”
“There is no need to be so passive and reactionary. You can be proactive in all elements of your life.”
“Check yourself. If you’re going to assume constantly that people are going to let you down,then that might be a good sign that you are the one who is doing the down-letting.”
YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK IF:
You wanna support Hannah Hart
You are okay with things making zero sense
You like a funny book with gag-recipes that symbolise life events and situations
You are not expecting an actual cookbook FullSizeRender-7
In conclusion: No.
But it’s a loving “this is not for me, but I DO think you’re awesome”-no.
Now I just really hope that I do love her next book.
Not to be that blagher, but genuinely curious: Did you read this? Do you agree? Do you have any wisdom to share to help me ‘get it’? Let me know in the comments.
*Affiliate links.
**Let this be a lesson to hysterical fangirls all over the world: You can be a fan, love someone, and STILL not think everything they do is amazing and brilliant. You can not like a thing your favorite does.