Author & Stand-Up Comedian
"Not everything that breaks you is bad. Sometimes that's exactly where the good stuff starts to grow."— Trey Toler
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"Good Damage is a remarkable book about healing trauma with laughter and how dark humor can be the most illuminating part of us." — Margaret Cho, comedian and actress
"A candid and moving account that's buoyed by humor... it is relentlessly optimistic and effectively blends his personal narrative with poignant observations on life in general." — Kirkus Indie Reviews
"Trey Toler's laugh-out-loud memoir Good Damage leans into the power of human connections." — Foreword Clarion Review
About
Trey Toler talks about the stuff most people only admit in therapy — and he does it with the velocity of someone used to keeping a room engaged, and the sensitivity of someone who learned early how to read what isn't being said.
Raised in the American South by a single mother with chronic illness, he stepped into adult awareness young, and never fully stepped back out of it.
His debut memoir, Good Damage, is what came of that.
"Although Toler's absorbing volume doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of life, it is relentlessly optimistic."— Kirkus Reviews
The Book
Tragedy. Lightly Polished, with a Side of Optimism
Devastating and funny. Dark and light. Good and damage. A memoir that refuses to separate them. Good Damage is the debut memoir from Trey Toler about the messy, unscripted "after" — after the illness, the loss, the burnout, and the exhausting performance of recovery.
At the heart of the story is his mother — her fierce beauty, her harrowing brain surgery, and her eventual absence. Instead of reframing the past with empty optimism, Trey writes from the messy space where many of us actually live, channeling the dark, earned humor of a stand-up comic who has learned that nothing pulls strangers into a room faster than the truth you didn't plan to admit.
Get the book →Speaking
Trey used to look at his own life like a vulture. Now he sees it like a hummingbird — and he's pretty sure you can learn the difference too.
He reads from a chapter, then tells the joke that was hiding inside it the whole time. The reading crowd ends up laughing at the bit, the comedy crowd ends up asking where to buy the book. One set, two reasons to be there.
Trey joins the discussion in person. A Southern memoir built around church, his mother's death, and a stand-up career — giving a club two different feelings to sit with at once: the grief, and the humor that got him through it.
Resilience, identity, grief, the long after. Vulture or hummingbird — same life, just depends what you scan for.
Before the night ends, he opens the floor — sixty seconds, anyone who wants it, their own before-and-after line. Turning a few dozen strangers into one audience.
"People don't connect because you're flawless or fascinating. They connect because the honesty underneath it lets them recognize themselves."— Trey Toler, Good DamageBook me to speak
Media
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