On Second Thought
March is Women’s History Month in addition to the month we celebrate Patrick, the patron saint of green beer.
Since I am an Irish feminist woman it seems this would be my month to shine.
I am a feminist because as Maya Angelou (one of my big Sheros) once famously said, “I am a feminist. I have been a female for a long time now. I’d be stupid not to be on my own side.”
In that spirit, I want to talk about strong, brave and funny women in this space all month.
I’m starting with something personal to me -an anthology I was blessed to be invited to submit to that is filled with brave, hard and funny stories by women writers, some of them great friends of mine. The book, Fast Funny Women, released this week and is a collection of 75 essays of flash nonfiction.
I got my first print copies of Fast Funny Women a little over a week ago, and it was not what I was expecting ... which was perfect.
Disclaimer: I got a digital copy months ago and reading a book on the computer feels a bit to me like hugging while wearing a full body wetsuit -the same but not at all the same. Also, it gives me a headache, so I stick with my old friend, the printed book.
Anyway, I thought it was going to be a laugh-a-minute set of short essays designed to make us forget our current less-than-satisfactory reality. Instead, I found that we wrote about our actual lives and invited the reader to crawl inside the realness of it and experience with us -all while laughing at the absurdity of it.
We pull you into our lives -if even just for a while -by exposing our own embarrassment, missteps, awkwardness and shame. And of course, we did it with truth and humor.
I wrote about my father’s funeral, which is generally not a topic found in the humor section, unless you are a woman apparently. I wasn’t the only one to write about death, to my surprise. One of my favorite essays in the book so far is one of the funniest obituaries I’ve ever read. I’m a sucker for a good obituary.
My dear friend, and the editor of this fabulous anthology, Dr. Gina Barreca, told me several years ago when I met her at an Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop that men and women do humor differently. Men tend to take a Three Stooges approach and women -we tell stories, so you should probably sit down.
Also, I was with Gina outside the Marriott in Dayton, Ohio a few years ago when she made comedian Judith Carter laugh so hard she threw up in the bushes. She knows her stuff when it comes to storytelling and humor.
Only a crazy person, or a woman humor writer, would write about her father’s celebration of life service and hope people laugh. I could be both, and thankfully Gina recognized that in me.
Included in this book are best-selling authors, playwrites, physicians, journalists, professors, a judge (Judge Judy, y’all!), comedians, and students. All of them are fierce, smart, funny women who can also write and tell a good story.
The book is currently available at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million (online only for now, but maybe we can change that locally) and Amazon. And, Iowa Park’s Tom Burnett Memorial Library will have a copy soon.
A toast of my green cider beer to ALL of the Fast Funny Women in my life who keep it real and funny, give me stories to tell and listen to mine. You keep me laughing when a hundred things a day tell me it’s not time to laugh.
You save me.
