Well this was a fast and funny read. I wish the audio version of The Last Black Unicorn had been available first because listening to this book in Tiffany Haddish's unique delivery would have been even funnier. I may even listen to it when it finally comes through the waitlist from the library. I was first made aware of Tiffany Haddish through a friend who had seen her on SNL and suggested we have a girls evening of watching Girls Trip. This was a great idea as the movie was hilariously raunchy and Tiffany Haddish did really steal the show. Tiffany and I are around the same age, but the similarities pretty much stop there. She grew up in terrible circumstances, abandoned at 3 by her father, raised by a constantly fighting mother and step father among half-siblings who were favored by the adults. Then her stepfather attempted to murder her mother (maybe) and all the kids by cutting the brake lines to the car. Instead of dying, her mother was terribly injured and schizophrenia was triggered. She was then put into foster care where she lived in multiple group homes and suffered terrible beatings until she was eventually placed with her grandmother.After reaching the age of 18 and graduating high school, her grandmother put her out of the house on her own. Tiffany lived out of her car while pursuing a comedy career. She then married an abusive husband and left and remarried and left him again. There are some bright spots in all this but the mere fact that Tiffany can still find humor and light in the world is the brightest of spots. She's great. And hilarious. The book isn't the most polished, but neither is Tiffany, and that feels right.
4/5 Stars.
I'll just start out this
review with the fact that I LOOOOOOVE Tina Fey. I love that she's
unapologetic over her success. She's self-effacing and confident at the
same time. So listening to her read her own book was a real pleasure.
Bossy
Pants gives a thorough history of Fey's upbringing and her start at
Second City in Chicago. I loved the chapter detailing her days at the
Evanston YMCA, a place I've been to a thousand times. I too have been
warned to wear a bike helmet when walking around in the area. See, Tina
Fey, I'm famous by proxy now!
She gives a great perspective on
what it was like to work at Saturday Night Live and later on 30 Rock, a
show I absolutely adore and am sad is no longer on TV. She even goes
into detail on her stint playing Sarah Palin which was after she had
already left SNL. It's weird that the book came out in 2011 and so much
has changed since then. One of the last chapters is about whether she
was going to have another baby (she may have been pregnant while
actually taping that audio portion) and 30 Rock is, sadly, no longer on
TV.
Tina Fey is hopefully going to be around producing and
acting for quite some time. I think she's a great role model for doing
your own thing and being unapologetic (whoops I used this word to describe her already) about doing it as a woman. She's
one of those famous people I'd really like to have a beer with.
4/5 Stars.
