The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo
Review: 3.5/5
First time read
Amy Schumer is a comedian most of us know. I’ve seen her live and thought she was pretty funny, though more crude than I was expecting (I didn’t know her very well back then...), and I really liked Trainwreck. I’ve been wanting to read this book since it came out and had no idea what to expect, until a coworker warned it’s not all fun and jokes. After finishing, I knew what she meant, but I actually liked it more because of that.
Schumer gets into some darker and deeper areas, her abusive relationship, her father’s life with MS, and it made me like her more. Just because she’s a comedian doesn’t mean her biography has to be a lighthearted laugh fest the whole way through. She’s a real person with real issues and feelings and I like that she chose to address those.
I also think she had a lot of advice to give and wisdom to impart. Throughout the book, Schumer discusses how she has her good and bad days like everyone else, but, overall, she loves her body. She wishes it hadn’t taken her thirty years to do so, but she’s appreciative of it now. She says it a lot better and in varied ways throughout, but that’s the basic gist. I’ve certainly read this sentiment many times before, but with Schumer’s anecdotes and maybe even because of how many times she discusses it (not to excess), it hit home with me.
She also talks about issues that people may say she has no business discussing, really one chapter in particular, but she is very upfront about that and explains that she, like anyone else, has an opinion and thus educated herself so she would know what she was talking about.
I thought this was a refreshingly real biography. Sure, I expected more laughs, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this read. The grittiness added to it, in my opinion. I also really liked the moments where the book turned into a love letter to New York. It was sweet to read about how excited Schumer still is to live in this place she aspired to be her whole life, even when growing up only an hour away. It was also inspiring because we got her whole back story and saw how hard she worked and struggled to make her unlikely dreams happen. Not to mention, her inner journey to just generally feeling good about herself. I was hit with some real feels at all these parts. When I shut this book, I felt empowered to go out and work on my own crazy, unrealistic goals. So here we are. Hope you too get a moment like this in the very near future.
