In opposition with the European literary mindset, in the USA you can write a memoir regardless your age and your professional and personal achievements. As long as you have a story to tell and you enjoy a certain notoriety in your profession, age doesn't matter. On the other side of the pond, you don't have to reach a very ripe age to share your story to the whole world.
Amy Poehler is a comedian, with a long list of roles, a professional partner of Tina Fey. Her Yes Please memoir tells her story as a woman, mother and comedian, through small energetic essays which cover both her personal life - from childhood on - and her encounters as comedian to famous politicians, music stars and actors. With a lot of humour and self-irony she makes you laugh and think and it is already enough for reading this book.
Truth is that sometimes you may ask why exactly you need to read a specific encounter or not, as I didn't find all - or most of the - adventures necessarily relevant, but being famous sells and I bet there are people in the States who really consider it relevant. For us, Europeans, it may not, as the distribution and the roles are mostly foreign to us - thanks Gd there is Netflix which bridges the trans-atlantic cultural misunderstanding gap.
But justice to be done to the book, there are also interesting advices about career and women in show-biz, and some family inspiration. Enough to fill some columns in some women-oriented publication but not realized always why this should be a book, rather than a collection of essays. The writing flows too and if you want to fill your afternoon with some not-challenging, not-so-bad kind of writing, this is a wise way to use your time.
Rating: 2 1/2 - 3 stars
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