If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace, here they are. No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly. (Some people say “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.)
Perhaps you’re a parent and you bought this book to learn how to raise an achievement-oriented, drug-free, adult virgin. You’ll find that, too. The essential ingredients, I can tell you up front, are a strong father figure, bad skin, and a child-sized colonial-lady outfit.
Maybe you bought this book because you love Sarah Palin and you want to find reasons to hate me. We’ve got that! I use all kinds of elitist words like “impervious” and “torpor,” and I think gay people are just as good at watching their kids play hockey as straight people.
Maybe it’s seventy years in the future and you found this book in a stack of junk being used to block the entrance to an abandoned Starbucks that is now a feeding station for alien militia. If that’s the case, I have some questions for you. Such as: “Did we really ruin the environment as much as we thought?” and “Is Glee still a thing?”
These few paragraphs, from the introduction to Tina Fey’s Bossypants, are probably enough for you to decide whether or not you will like this book. I was laughing so hard that my sides ached, and I couldn’t wait to see what followed. (Of course, as a fan of Fey’s work on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, I wasn’t surprised.)
This collection of essays comically chronicles some of Fey’s childhood experiences (a trip with cousins where she first becomes aware of the standards of feminine beauty, her father’s strong but loving presence, her experiences at summer drama camp), her early days as a performer (a downer of a job as a YMCA desk clerk so that she can afford improv classes, road trips with the touring company of Chicago’s famed Second City), her days at Saturday Night Live (an awkward interview with Lorne Michaels, the difference between male and female comedians, her friendship with Amy Poehler), the challenges of 30 Rock, her weeks of impersonating Sarah Palin, and the struggle of working mothers everywhere.
Bossypants is not a memoir (as some reviews erroneously claim). It is a collection of personal essays—and a very funny one at that! It is also an examination of the working woman at the start of the twenty-first century. And it is a book filled with the unmistakable voice of its author.
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