By Eisa Nefertari Ulen

Damon Wayans, the second-eldest son in one of Black Hollywood’s most successful family dynasties has written the perfect summer beach read novel with surprising insights into and empathy for a demographic very different than his own.

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, “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 woman 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 members of the Red Hats have each other’s backs and offer Alma a key to their queendom, a real-life global collection of mature women that began in the 1990s, inspired by the book, The Red Hat Society: Fun and Friendship After Fifty, by Sue Ellen Cooper.

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, he explores such topics as drug use, infidelity, interracial marriage, and unethical systems that plague everyday people. There is also a surprising theme of health and wellness in the novel, as characters cope with diabetes and obesity – even STDs. But Red Hats still feels as 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 LaLa 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.