"Yes Please": Poignant and Real

I never thought much about Amy Poehler on SNL.  It wasn't that I didn't think she was funny, but I never really gave her much thought.  At the time she was a cast member along with her "comedy wife" Tina Fey, I was living in Philadelphia without cable.  We only got two channels on our t.v. and we didn't get NBC.

I fell in love with Tina Fey after I had been prompted by friends and family members alike to watch 30 Rock.  My husband and I binge watched all the seasons.  When Poehler's Parks and Recreation came out, I was in another phase.  I was pregnant with my daughter Story and not all that interested in jerky camera movements and characters glancing at the camera to get laughs.  I started to really pay attention to Amy Poehler when she co-hosted the Golden Globes with Tina Fey and they (as Amy Poehler would say) "crushed." So many people told me that I had to watch Parks and Recreation, but even though I had cable at that point in my life, I still didn't have the time to watch another comedy.

After reading "Yes Please", I am a fan of Amy's going so far as to begin binge watching Parks and Recreation (after one weekend I am already through the first 3 seasons!).  Although the New York Times gave "Yes Please" a scathing review, I would like to respectfully disagree.  The reviewer said that Amy doesn't know how to write, cuts on her looks too much, and apologizes for how boring her book is.  I'm not sure if I read the same book, but I saw this book as a humble gift by a very talented writer, comedian and actress whose blue collar beginnings did not stop her from becoming the revered and lauded phenom that she is today.

Does she explain how agonizing it is to write a book? Yes, because anyone who has ever written a book knows that it is hard.  Does she delve into her relationship with her appearance? Yes, because any woman (and man with the exception of the dude who wrote the mean review) would understand what growing up with asymmetrical, not classically beautiful features means.  It doesn't mean that she thinks she is ugly, it just means that she is highly aware of the fact that she is neither drop dead model gorgeous or homely.  She's somewhere in between.  Does she sometimes opt out of the comedic in this memoir / autobiography account of her life and instead go for a more universal take on humanity and the hard work that it takes to become a star? Yes, and that is because she's being honest and real and at times really funny as she is being honest and real.

There are so many aspects of this book to love including cameos from famous friends and adoring family members, funny stories about what it's really like to work on SNL, the earth shattering devastation of divorce, the Improv scene in New York and Chicago, what it's like to work on Parks and Recreation, what it's like to be in love with your kids, and how sometimes you need to step way outside of your comfort zone to find comfort like when she went to Haiti and spent time working in an orphanage there.

Amy's book really showed me that she is a real person who loves to laugh, live, make others laugh, and be a powerful and bossy woman without making excuses, but apologizing when necessary. She loves many of the people who helped get her to where she is today, and in turn she has dedicated her life to help others succeed in comedy.  I laughed (when she was explaining her drug use), I cried (when she recounted her trip to the Haitian orphanage), I was touched by her love for her boys (when she talked about their personalities and chasing the moon, I smiled the whole chapter), I was never bored while reading this (how could you be with so many insightful and funny anecdotes?), and it made me a fan of someone who I didn't really pay that much attention to before.

That sounds like a pretty great book to me.

"I Like You Just the Way I am": Narcissistic and Immature with a Few Laughs

I really wanted a funny memoir to make me laugh out loud.  All the reviews of Jenny Mollen's "I like you just the way I am" touted her as the most hilarious woman on Twitter and praised her hysterical blog posts for "Playboy's" Smoking Jacket.  After the Author's Note where she explains how she created composites and exaggerations and then says, "The only thing I'm sure of with complete certainty is that I was really thin and cute the whole time I was writing this" her likability factor dropped way low for me.  This book was more narcissistic and gross than I wanted it to be, and the laugh out loud moments were few and far between.  Maybe I was in the wrong mind set to read it, but it was hard for me to get to the end, and I found myself reading other books rather than facing another one of Jenny Mollen's tales of self centered TMI.

What I love about memoirs or personal essay collections is that you really get to be inside a person's head.  David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers and his honesty and storytelling about the ridiculous things that happen in his life make me laugh out loud. When I saw Garrison Keillor speak and he presented some of the ridiculous moments of his life - some of them more perverse than others, I laughed.  When I read "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, I laughed almost the entire way through the book at all of her ridiculous moments which she describes with awkward clarity.  Jenny Mollen pales in comparison to the storytelling greats who incorporate humor into their life tales.  She instead reverts to the most perverse, most disgusting, most sexual and most twisted events in her life to shock her audiences, and it just wasn't for me.

I didn't want to know about she and her husband's tryst with a Vegas prostitute, or her foray into the world of S&M after reading "Fifty Shades of Grey." I was disturbed by her adolescent behavior in stalking her husband's ex-girlfriend and her antics to try and meet her because she really just wants everyone to like her.  I was dismayed at her manipulation of one of her best friends to get Botox, and horrified that she threw her entire social circle and family under the crushing Jenny Mollen bus.  I did chuckle a little at her essay "Show Me Your Teets" about the time her dog ate condoms, but other than that, the rest of the book either freaked me out because of her emotional instability (even if it was exaggerated) and the crassness of the stories.

I really wanted to like this book as much as I think Jenny Mollen really wants people to like her.  Her honesty was not charming or funny, but disturbing.  Do women really think this way? Is this what the internal voice of the typical American woman is like? Am I that out of touch with what people think is funny? Ultimately, this book was not a laugh out loud collection of personal essays as much as it was a collection of essays that people who love "Playboy" would love to read.  I am not that demographic, and people who are (and people who aren't) will never look at Jason Biggs or Jenny Mollen the same.

"My Accidental Jihad": The Complex Journey of the Marriage of Two Cultures

“According to Ismail, the prophet Muhammad taught that the greatest jihad, or struggle, of our lives is not the one that takes place on the battlefield but the one that takes place within our hearts - the struggle, as I understood it, to manifest humility, wisdom, and compassion. Ramadan threw me into my own accidental jihad, forcing me to wrestle with my intolerance and self-absorption. And I had been losing ground in this battle, forgetting my husband’s intentions and focusing instead on the petty ways I was inconvenienced by his practice.”

When aspiring journalist, Krista Bremer, turned in her California surfing lifestyle where the next wave took precedence over material wealth or job security, for an educational opportunity in North Carolina, she had no idea that she'd meet her future husband while doing her daily run.  She had no idea that her future husband would be way older than her, have yellowing teeth, nor that he would be a Libyan.

In Bremer's memoir, "My Accidental Jihad", she uncovers what those of us who are married already understand - marriage is hard work.  But, the work that Bremer and her husband, Ismail, encounter possesses it's own complications based on faith (he's Islamic, she's a non practicing Christian) and culture (he haggles over the price of a wedding ring, she just wants to pay what the salesperson asks and is mortified that her husband would even consider arguing the price).

The power in the book stemmed from Bremer's internal grappling with what she loved about Ismail (he is a warm place for her that she didn't know she needed), and what she can't understand or tolerate about him (his need to strictly follow Ramadan restrictive practices which she calls "Ramathon" or his insistence on living on what we need rather than living in excess).

Their accidental love story begins with a love of running on the trails around Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a coincidental meeting at a market where he shows her how amazing fresh tomatoes can be.  They hook up even though he is everything that she never wanted.  He lives in a sparsely furnished attic apartment with meager possessions.  He seems to love cleaning the counters.  He's much older than she is (and he even has, gasp, wrinkles which are taboo in the California landscape she's used to which worships at the alter of youth and false appearances).  After Bremer accidentally gets pregnant, they decide to get married on purpose and begin the precarious balancing act of starting a life together as two relative strangers who know little about each other's histories, dreams and desires.

She traverses the marriage missteps, but is always able to eventually see things from Ismail's perspective like when they are on a used car lot because she no longer wants to be embarrassed by his 1987 Toyota.  Giving into Krista's demands to get a new car, he tells her that all the cars are the same to him.  To her, there was a difference between a shiny new car and a 1987 Toyota.  She reasons, “In that instant, I glimpsed the lifelong challenge of our marriage: I assumed we saw the same thing when we observed the world, but our interpretations of what we were looking at would never be the same.”

At times Bremer's overflowing, flowery language was a bit much. Like when she described her pregnancy nightmares: "At night I dreamed of the taut skin of my belly tearing like tissue paper against the weight of this somersaulting body, of frantically tucking tiny limbs back inside as hot blood spilled through slippery fingers." At other times, she doesn't give enough information about Ismail's history (maybe she doesn't know it?) or about his present situation. He comes off sounding more like an Americanize peasant rather than an older, sophisticated, PhD student who lives simply. She sometimes goes for an easy victory of how Ismail's view of the world and his culture with it's emphasis on family raising, spiritual fulfillment, and an aversion to material possessions are infinitely better than the "thing crazed," lack of faith, selfish, workaholic Americans.

Even with the chronological leaps, the story of Ismail and Krista sustained my interest and even invoked a few tears. Who hasn't had marital strife or communication problems with their spouse who at times feels like a foreigner? Who hasn't questioned the in-law's practices or cringed at the thought of being left alone at a dinner table while the in-law relatives spoke in what seemed like a foreign language? The only difference here is that Krista really did marry a man from a different culture which becomes painfully clear when they travel to Libya to meet Ismail's family. They bring their 5 year old daughter, Aliya, along on the trip, and Krista deals with the language barrier, culture barrier and with her early pregnancy pains as well.

Marriage can often be a wrestling match of intolerance of the other's point of view or self-absorption. It's a precarious balancing act to love the differences between us and our partners and not let them tear us apart. Bremer's book "My Accidental Jihad" shows that marriages between even the most dissimilar people can work when they treat each other with respect, and celebrate rather than vilify the differences between them with humility, wisdom and compassion. That's the real magic behind marriages and love stories that last.

A House in the Sky: A Story of Hope

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett held me hostage for two days. I couldn't stop reading the terrifying account of Amanda and Nigel's kidnapping in Somalia.  I felt their fear when their captors forced them into a jeep and locked them in a room with two small mats and mosquito nets. I visualized their anguish when their captors shackled their ankles just in case they tried to escape.  I cried for Amanda's torture and rape.  I understood her religious conversion and her clever manipulation of her guards.  When she and Nigel found ways to communicate after their separation, I rejoiced in their  reunion and secret Christmas presents.

Mostly as I read this book I gasped.  My husband watched me reading and continually asked me, "What is going on in that book?  It's like you're not here."  And when I told him the story of Amanda and Nigel's Somalia capture, he wanted to know the play by play.  Each hour he saw me reading he asked, "Did they escape?" or "How are they doing now?"  I hardly wanted to come up for air to explain it to him as I flew through the pages to find out what happened to Nigel and Amanda.

What, you might be asking, led to the capture of Nigel and Amanda, two amateur photographers and journalists, in Somalia? The story Amanda tells starts in her impoverished childhood where she dumpster dove for fun - rifling through the remnants of other's trash to find treasures.  As an adult Amanda sought escape and comfort in travel, and when she found her footing on foreign soil, she wanted the thrill and challenge of visiting forbidden places - Afghanistan, Beirut, Baghdad, Amman, and Damascus.  When she received the opportunity to travel to Somalia as a journalist and photographer, she reasoned with herself that "there were stories here - a raging war, and impending famine, religious extremists, and a culture that had been largely shut out of sight." She wanted to "do stories that mattered, that moved people" even with the impending danger and even with the knowledge that few reporters risked going to Somalia.  As the Italian missionary man on the fretful plan ride to Somalia told her and Nigel, "Be very careful in Mogadishu . . . Your head is worth a half million dollars there.  And that's just for your head."

Even with the sinking feeling in her soul, and the warnings from others, Amanda and Nigel forged forward to Somalia with the blind faith that their guides and press passes would protect them.

They didn't last long in the harsh landscape of violence before Somalia reared its ugliness.  Amanda and Nigel were captured and held hostage and thrust into a bizarre business world of negotiations, ransom, political maneuvers, religious extremists, fear, and suffering.

I felt this book the whole way through, and rejoiced at the end of the story because ultimately Amanda's story is one of hope, survival and forgiveness.  I cried during my two day A House in the Sky binge and got sweaty as Amanda and Nigel suffered at the hands of their captors.

When I finished the book, I sat still in front of my iPad for a few minutes - wanting to absorb the full weight of Amanda's story.  My husband asked, "So how does it end?" and I didn't know what to tell him.  I simply said, "Do you know how strong the human spirit is? We can survive anything.  We just need to convince ourselves that we can."

A tsunami of emotional turmoil

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

On Sunday, December 26th 2004, I welcomed visitors into my home to meet our three day old baby girl, Raina June.  She quietly greeted her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and our best friends.  Most of the day, she spent rolled in her burrito swaddling blanket patiently looking around her new home.  Every once in awhile she cried gently, and she was promptly handed to me to be fed while our guests engaged in lively after Christmas banter.  I, too, sat quietly most of the day as an endless stream of visitors came through our front door to welcome Raina into the world and celebrate Christmas with my husband and me. I felt overwhelmed by emotions - I was a new mother.  Our new baby girl had so much love surrounding her.  It was Christmas and somehow in the flood of the anticipation of Raina's arrival, the birth, hospital stay and arriving home, I had missed the actual holiday, but I still felt the rush of holiday happiness.  Warmth, new life and holiday spirit washed over me on that December morning.

Sonali Deraniyagala, half way around the world, experienced a different flood on that same morning.  As she and her family quietly basked in the afterglow of their holiday celebrations - her two young boys sat in their resort hotel room playing with their Christmas toys, and she and her husband were leisurely getting up to their morning vacation routine - a tsunami rushed toward their Sri Lankan, nature preserve, beach front resort.  After glancing outside, Deraniyagala felt panic as the ocean met the horizon at an abnormally high peak and was moving toward them fast.  No warning was given.

She yelled at her boys to run.  She shouted for her husband to hurry, and not until he heard her repeated cries to move did he react to the danger.  She did not have time to warn her parents in the room next to her as they ran out of the resort and hopped in a jeep.  All the moments of panic were quickly overtaken by the huge wave as it reached land and swept the jeep and anything else in its path away, away, away.  She remembered turning over and over again and then resurfacing to catch hold of a branch, disoriented, turning in circles over and over as the water surrounded her.

On Sunday, December 26th as we welcomed new life into our family, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her two young sons, her husband, and her parents to the tsunami.

I remember the pictures on the news and how I had to turn it off not wanting those sad emotions or images in my fantasy baby moon land.  I wanted to protect my new baby from even the thought of such a natural disaster.  That could never happen here.  I will keep you safe, baby.  I will never let a wave sweep you away.

But sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you want it to, and Deraniyagala explains her devastating loss and return to life after being the only surviving member of her family in her memoir "Wave."  I choked on Deraniyagala's words.  They caught in my throat and sometimes I found it hard to turn the pages as waves of nausea swept over me - how can anyone recover from such loss?  Her battle with depression, her questions about life, her battle to find a new reality after her entire life was swept away, her desire to die and her overriding feeling of "Why did I survive when all those that I loved died?" . . . I was painfully reminded on every page how delicate life is.  How fragile we all are.  How everything can change in our lives so quickly no matter how successful or happy or careful we are.

I wasn't sure I wanted to read "Wave" because I knew it would be sad.  It was sad.  I ached when I read it for Deraniyagala's losses.  Her ability to tell her story with strength, insight, honesty and raw emotion inspired me. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired by her story of recovery in a tidal wave of so much sadness.