Angela Nissel has spent years making audiences laugh through her work on beloved television comedies like Scrubs and mixed-ish. But in her latest project, she trades jokes and punchlines for an intimate exploration of grief, identity and the complicated love between mothers and daughters.
In her recently released novel, Good Grief: Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, Nissel delivers a story layered with sharp wit and deep vulnerability. The book chronicles her battle with depression while navigating the glitz and chaos of Los Angeles, alongside the devastating moment she learns her mother is dying from cancer.
Nissel offers readers readers an unfiltered look at what it means to love someone who never fully seemed to approve of you, a dynamic many people will recognize but may have felt pressured to navigate in silence because of familial expectations and stigma.
Throughout the novel, she examines the tension between deep love and lingering emotional distance.
Blavity spoke with Nissel about Good Grief: Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead and how the book unpacks the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, as well as the unspoken expectations placed on daughters to serve as caregivers, emotional anchors and high achievers, often at the expense of their own well-being.
Your book reminds us that grief can look and feel different for everyone, especially when it comes to acknowledging the truth in your feelings. Why was it important to enlighten people with that truth?
Angela Nissel: Because “everyone grieves differently” has become a cliché we trot out when someone isn’t crying the “right” way — like a wife who doesn’t shed enough tears at her husband’s funeral. But grief being different doesn’t just mean not crying. In my case, it meant laughing at a funeral, trying to get my 75-year-old stepdad arrested and behaving in ways that cost me real relationships — including my brother cutting me off. I thought “everyone grieves differently” meant quiet deviations from the “stages of grief” cycle. I didn’t realize it could look like complete chaos. I wanted my book to tell the truth about that process. I also really enjoy making people laugh — I find that brutally truthful comedy is a great teacher. I wanted to share my grief rock-bottoms in the hope that people laugh, but also quietly question whether they’re truly comfortable with the cliché that everyone grieves differently. I know I wasn’t — not until I went through it myself.
Were you ever tempted to soften certain moments, or was unbridled honesty always the goal?
AN: Whew, these are some good ass questions. Yes, yes, yes — absolutely, I wanted to soften things. My mom raised me not to “put my business in the streets.” In public, you act like you have it all together, or the world will see your weakness and come for you like a ninja. But she also passed before social media, and honestly, if she saw what people put “in the streets” now, she’d probably say, “Baby, write the book. Nobody reads anyway.” The truth is, softening emotional experiences makes them less real. And I connect more deeply with people — on the page and in life — when I’m willing to be honest about being messy, flawed and very human. That’s where the humor lives, and in my experience, it’s also where the healing is.
What did writing this book reveal to you about your relationship with your mother that you didn’t fully understand while she was alive?
AN: My mother was very “I’m not one of your little friends.” Her love life, her loneliness, even her health — those were her business. She raised me to focus on school and career, so most of our conversations stayed on those topics. “How’s work?” was always the first question. Writing this book made me realize how much of her inner life I never got to see. I wish, as I got older, she had let me in more — on her fears, her loneliness, her need for companionship. But she saw herself as the protector, even through cancer. And protecting me meant carrying those things alone. That dynamic didn’t really shift until the very end, and even then, not all the way. I had to learn to navigate around the parts of her she wasn’t comfortable sharing with a daughter.
The title is a great balance of humor and heartbreak. How did you land on Good Grief: Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, and what message does it send about your approach to telling this story?
AN: I wanted the title to signal that even in the middle of caregiving and loss, life is still absurd and funny. Perhaps even more so, because when battling an illness or managing grief, you can become laser-focused on that Herculean task and suddenly realize that most of the things we worry about daily are silly AF. Is someone going to die if I make a bad work decision? Nope. Then I really shouldn’t overthink every decision. As a matter of fact, eff that job. And the title is literal. I actually said, “My mom is dead — can you pass the bread?” at my ex-boyfriend’s family Christmas dinner. It just … came out. Someone asked about my family. I answered, “My mom is dead,” and felt horrible for bringing up something like death at a dinner table where we were celebrating cute baby Jesus and Santa, so I tried to change the subject and asked for a dinner roll. That moment captures what I tried to do in the book: show how caretaking and grief collide with everyday life in awkward, human, sometimes darkly funny ways. If the book does anything, I hope it makes conversations about death feel a little less stiff — and a lot more honest.
You explore loving someone deeply while also feeling unseen or disapproved of by them. How did you navigate holding both of those truths at once?
AN: Because I believe people do the best they can until they know how to do better. My mom was shaped by a generation of Black women who were just beginning to access the so-called “American Dream” — and who paid for it. Watching girls her age risk their lives just to go to school — like the New Orleans Four — taught her that survival meant being strong, self-sufficient and emotionally contained. She didn’t have language for vulnerability or mental health — because no one gave it to her. So yes, I felt unseen at times. But I also understand why. I grew up in an era where Black women could talk more freely about emotions. She didn’t have that luxury. You can’t give what you were never given — and holding that truth is what allows me to love her without resentment.
There’s often pressure — especially for daughters — to become caretakers and emotional anchors for their families. How did those expectations shape your experience as your mother became ill?
AN: I watched my mother try to care for her own parents while working full-time — and carry guilt when she couldn’t do it all. That stayed with me. So when she got sick, I was in a strange position: I was broke and unemployed — and honestly, that felt like a gift. I could give her my full attention without the constant pull of work. But it also made something very clear: The way our lives are structured, most people don’t have that option. Caregiving at that level requires time, money and support — and most people are short on all three. We say it takes a village to raise a child — but nobody talks about the village it takes to help someone die. And most of us are doing that alone. Which is why I try not to judge how people show up as caretakers. Just like grief, everyone is navigating it the best way they can.
You mention the nuanced conversations that plague Black families, especially questioning religion, changing your views of success and stability, etc. How do you think confronting those topics and denouncing them all played a part in your relationship with your mother, as well as the grieving process?
AN: My mother was deeply rooted in the church — her church hats took up more space than her clothes. That community sustained her. I came up in a different era, asking questions she was never allowed to ask. I challenged religion, success, even the idea of stability — and to her, that felt like failure. Like she had done something wrong. How dare I not dream of an office job? Did I understand that women like us could only be domestics? But her worldview was shaped by survival. She came of age when the law itself treated her as less than. So for her, security wasn’t optional — it was everything. Understanding that helped me put our differences in context. And that made grieving her more layered — because I wasn’t just mourning her, I was also reckoning with everything that shaped her.
Did writing this book change how you define forgiveness, particularly within family? How do you hope it helps others in that way?
AN: It made me realize how essential forgiveness — especially self-forgiveness — is. In her final days, my mom shared guilt about certain parenting choices. But many of the things she carried shame about, I had either forgotten or already understood. That was eye-opening. We hold on to things long after the people we think we’ve hurt have let them go. For me, forgiveness comes from recognizing that most people are doing the best they can with what they have. When you really accept that, forgiveness — at least for me — becomes a natural extension of understanding.
Was there a moment during your mother’s illness or after her passing when your understanding of grief fundamentally shifted?
AN: Yes — when I turned all of her photos around because I couldn’t look at her face without crying. And when I cursed out my then-boyfriend because he threw out expired orange juice. The orange juice container was one of the last things she had touched, and something about discarding the last traces of her DNA set me off. I’m sure my neighbors were thinking, “Wow, Angela is really passionate about orange juice.” Honestly, I was so loud I’m surprised they didn’t call the cops. I never pictured “screaming over Tropicana” on my “grief bingo card,” as the kids say.
For readers who are estranged or emotionally distant from a parent, what does “grieving honestly” look like?
AN: I can only say what it looks like for me, because my father is alive and we haven’t spoken in decades. I often think about the fact that I probably won’t be at his funeral. For me, grieving honestly means mourning the relationship we never had and finding a way to give myself the love I missed out on. It means accepting that some people — even parents — can’t be who we need them to be. Sometimes, in my experience, that acceptance is easier than years of trying to force or beg someone to be the parent you needed.
This book gives readers permission to tell uncomfortable truths about their families. What has it meant for you to claim that permission for yourself?
AN: It’s led to deeper, more honest conversations — not just with readers, but with people in my own life. Because once you stop pretending your family is perfect, other people feel safe doing the same. And for me, it’s actually a form of respect. I’m not dishonoring my mother — I’m honoring her as a full, complex human being. We can’t heal generational patterns if we keep pretending everything was fine. I’m the first Black woman in my family to be raised in the USA, where (at least according to the law) we are equal to other races. Pretending our families are perfect after centuries of trauma? That’s trauma in itself!