This review appeared in edited form at TheDefendersOnline.com

With a book begging to be adapted for the big screen, the New York Times bestselling author of Bootleg and 2nd eldest son in one of Black Hollywood’s most successful family dynasties has written the perfect novel for your summer beach bag, Red Hats. Damon Wayans’ comic star began to rise when he helped change television on the too- too- short-lived sketch comedy show In Living Color. Later, he created and starred in one of only a handful of Tinsel Town sitcoms featuring stable, middle-class, all-American Black families, My Wife and Kids. With Red Hats, his debut novel, Wayans delivers page-turning edge, wit, and a surprising understanding of the lives of retirement-age women with single-ladies status, or, as one character puts it in Red Hats, “Sex and the City for old biddies.”

Alma, Wayans’ female protagonist, has enough mouth on her to warrant a smack — or worse — from friends, neighbors, and even family members who have pulled as far from her as they can to dodge her verbal ju-jitsu. Perhaps a smack would be better than the isolation Alma experiences because she can back-up her trash talk with real street-fighter action. Wayans convincingly develops Alma into a whole person over the course of the narrative, one more likely to offer support than a sucker-punch, a sister there for those in need, a chick you’d want on your team. She’s a good person who’s experienced real pain and finds a life-sustaining circle in a gaggle of single seniors just about as kooky as she is. The Red Hats have each other’s backs and offer Alma a key to their queendom. Readers of all ages and genders will keep flipping the pages of this delightful little novel to find out if Alma will accept their red hat, rekindle the love goddess within, and heal her way back to wholesomeness.

Wayans continues in the tradition of Black comedians who offer social commentary with every laugh. Just as he did in his earlier work on screens both big and small, Wayans explores the touchy and taboo, including drug use, infidelity, inter racial marriage, and shiesty system controllers that plague regular people. There is also a surprising theme of health and wellness in Red Hats, as characters cope with diabetes and obesity – even STDs. But Red Hats still feels light and fresh as any good laugh.

Whether or not Hollywood is ready to take a Jack Nicholson — Diane Keaton-style story of sex after sixty with African American characters to the multiplex near you remains to be seen. If no one options this book and makes it a solid, money-making movie, that’s La La Land’s loss. Either way, we can all enjoy the comedic gift of Damon Wayans by lounging on a beach chair this season and reading Red Hats.

Eisa Nefertari Ulen is author of the novel Crystelle Mourning who lives with her son and husband, a filmmaker and director of Sex, Drugs, and Comedy. http://www.sexdrugsandcomedy.com/ and www.EisaUlen.com