Books

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer

Read Yes
Length 323
Quick Review Amy Schumer is a household name as a bold and open comic, movie star, TV star, writer, and more, but do we really know her?

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I live under a rock, so I had never heard of Amy Schumer until her 2016 movie Trainwreck. In the two years following, I have become a big fan. I love her honesty. She’s not perfect, but she is real. In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, she ramps up her candor and imperfections even more. She becomes an even more relatable star as she humorously tells some of the ups and downs and face plants of her life.

I am drawn to people who deal with struggle through humor; probably because I do the same damn thing. Schumer’s stand up is hilarious and powerful and sometimes in your face. Her book is a subdued version of all of those things. She looks comfortable on stage for comedy shows. During interviews, she seems nervous and uncomfortable like she’d rather be any where else preferably not in the spotlight. Instead of entertaining on a stage or sitting on a couch for an interview, her introversion shines through. She is just that: an introvert. In her book, it feels like she gets to tell her story on her own terms without having the pressure of being funny.

I have always appreciated her unapologetic honesty. Her book is even more so. She talks about her family, her struggles, her relationships, losing her virginity, abuse, the road to success, having money, and so much more. She lets her fans and readers in and see what is behind her on stage persona.

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She has a very self-deprecating sense of humor. I appreciate this because I too spend most of my time pointing out my flaws. Although, I hope she could see herself the way so many people see her: as a smart, talented, beautiful woman. It is obvious she deals with self-esteem issues sometimes bordering on ‘does she have any self-confidence at all?’ But I would love to meet a woman on this earth who doesn’t. This book was written two years ago, and it’s evident the themes in her latest movie I Feel Pretty have been long lasting themes in her own life.

Candor is one of the most notable points in her memoir. She talks about her parents honestly. She has no qualm about critiquing or slamming present and past self. Her inclusion of diary entries is hilarious and wonderful. She includes footnotes, which are equally funny. It takes a lot of lady balls to let the world see the ridiculousness that is teenage diaries.

Schumer is a born storyteller. She has a tendency to meander through her stories and chapters by adding one or three tales on her way to making her main point. They may or may not have something to do with her point, but they are all entertaining.
I highly suggest The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo to anyone who enjoys a good laugh and a multidimensional memoir. I know I do!

Memorable Quotes
“If you’re a true introvert, other people are basically energy vampires.”
“I don’t know what a hedge fund is. I want a hedgehog fund.”
“…nobody can be innocent and wise at the same time.”
“This is how we were raised: we were always oppressively OKAY.”

Title: The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
Author: Amy Schumer
Publisher: Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster)
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9781501139888
Books

The Last Black Unicorn

Read: Yes
Length: 288
Quick Review: She is hilariously funny and heartbreakingly honest in a memoir about her uphill battles to a little bit of money, fame, stability, and happiness.

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I had never heard of Tiffany Haddish until Christmas, which is unsurprising since I live under a rock. She knocked my socks off in Girls Trip. I just had to read her book.

I read The Last Black Unicorn last night in one sitting in under a few hours. She is funny finding the humor in some of the darkest hours of her life. I can completely identify with her sense of humor. She used laughter as a survival and/or defense mechanism. Comedy was her way out of a life that could have ended in a million different ways of bad.

Haddish doesn’t shy away from the dark in her life with a cut and dry style. Her life is filled with concepts and feelings so many struggle to name and describe, but she lays them out in the world. Her childhood was filled with an abusive mom, an absent father, foster care, sexual abuse, physical abuse, homelessness, racism, depression and more. She was able to use her talent for entertaining to gather every experience and hardship and rise above. She succeeded when everything in the world was against her.

I knew she had had a rough childhood. I knew she was a comedian. Most comics write over the bad stuff with a sense of humor. Haddish wrote funny, but she also did not gloss over or try to make things funny that cannot be funny. She embraced the hard.

Haddish writes the way she talks. Her voice is evident throughout the entire novel. It’s hard not to feel a certain camaraderie because she’s talking to you. Allowing you to enter her internal dialogue and love her flaws and quirks and insecurities. She comes off as this confident woman, but under all the self-assuredness, she is still fighting to prove and explain her existence to everyone and herself.

I just want to give her hug. I don’t know if she likes hugs, but she deserves all the hugs.

Memorable Quotes
“Hurting myself made them stop hurting me and care about me.”
“I was eighteen. To survive, I had to quit comedy.”
“I wanted to be in the gang, because I felt like then I’d be a part of something.”
“When you ruin a black man’s shoes, you never know what’s going to happen.”

Title: The Last Black Unicorn
Author: Tiffany Haddish
Publisher: Gallery Books  (Simon & Schuster Inc. )
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781501181825