I’m Just a Person audiobook

Tig Notaro is a survivor. Her dry humor shines through these pages as she tells her life story: multiple brushes with death, romantic relationships, and snapshots of her childhood, parents, and thought processes. She shows us that she's "just a person", yes, but also how extraordinary an ordinary person can be when presented with nearly insurmountable difficulties like dropping out of school at an early age, having a biological father who was never present and a stepfather who was never available emotionally, a mother who was so immature that Tig practically raised herself, not to mention all of the health problems that came later. I picked up this book because I was enamored of Tig's stand-up routines. This book has their flavor but far more detail than her act- if you've enjoyed her comedy, you'll probably like this too.I loved reading about how Tig found her calling and her people: "I began to refer to the comedy scene as "the land of misfit toys." It was comforting to be surrounded by people who didn't fit into the confines of society, and it was the first time in my life that I wasn't met with the boring conversation stopper: "Oh my God, you're so weird." pg 47This part cracked me up- Tig's discovered lumps in her breasts but she doesn't think they're anything to be concerned about. Her girlfriend disagreed: "Instead of making a doctor's appointment, I spent the next couple months teasing Brooke by removing my shirt and saying, "Hey, wanna touch my cancer?" It was really fun to walk past her holding my chest and blurting out, "Ow! My cancer!" pg 109-110.I thought that the chapter in which Tig talks about her biological father, Pat, was particularly well-written. She takes complex emotional pain and makes it into something beautiful: "He was obviously still in pain over the loss of my mother and the news of my health, but I knew that this grief could not kindle any real kind of familial bond between us. I guess I believed there was something inherently broken in Pat's relationship with me and my brother. Maybe we had all missed some ambiguous window of time when we could have salvaged some hope for a real connection. I am certain, however, that we have the same feelings: I want everything to be okay for him and he wants everything to be okay for me." pg 205That is Tig's strength- her ability to take the worst in life and wring not just humor but meaning out of it. Some similar reads: Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me, or A Girl Named Zippy.

I like what I’ve learned here ….Comic- serious has a place in our world! Sorry for all the pain — Tig. — or anyone endures. I’m a newbie to Tig. I totally loved being in her space. Paul and I are enjoying the Hulu series. I still don’t know - yet - who Tig married. (But I can guess)So - yep … a treat to listen to this audiobook! Not too long! 5 hours and 5 minutes

The week after 9/11 The New Yorker’s cover was black and within, no cartoons. Comedy clubs were closed. But within a week the clubs reopened and the jokes flowed, and they were welcome. It’s what they do, comedians, make lemonade from lemons and then pour it over their heads and yours and make you laugh about it instead of crying about it. It's not "making light of a horrific subject," it's working hard to adjust one's attitude away from hopelessness, sometimes to hope, sometimes to absurdity. "Laughter is the best medicine"? Maybe. I have had Tig Notaro’s own audio reading of her memoir, I’m Just a Person, on my tbr list for years, but my friend J, a cancer survivor like Tig, told me I had to read it right now, that Tig was her soulmate, so I listened to it, pretty much straight through.Here’s an excerpt from Live (which she constantly has to be reminded is pronounced as the opposite of Die) a Grammy-award-winning comedy nominee album of 2012:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHXo3...We wouldn’t even be reading her book, written years later, were it not for this remarkable moment in the history of comedy. Notaro, a stand-up comedian, had been (what she thought was) dying from an intestinal disorder, C-Diff, but it gets worse: within that four month span her mother died, she broke up with her girlfriend, and she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Just hours before she went on stage she got the diagnosis and for reasons not even clear to her at the time she decided to go on anyway to see if she could somehow make comedy of it. It's what she does.On NPR, Notaro talks briefly about how she could even begin to make comedy about breast cancer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY5xJ...So I didn’t really know Notaro, who has not only survived but married, had twins through a surrogate and continues her comedy career. Since I didn’t know her story I thought it was sort of familiar, actually, as (for some reason not even clear to me) I have in the past few years read a lot of (mostly comics) cancer memoirs. But I have always had what might be described as a morbid fascination for “train wreck” memoirs about unbelievable experiences (I think at the moment of Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, describing how he lost both of his parents within a calendar year to cancer).Of course we all know cancer death and survival in our lives now, and some of us are ourselves survivors .Not me, which is to say all five of my sibs are cancer survivors and I—not yet!—am cancer-free. But I just this morning talked with one of my older sisters whose body is shot through with incurable cancer. I just heard today of the death from cancer of my good Goodreads friend Michael. And (also true story!) as I listened to the last thirty minutes of this book I got a call from my doctor about recent blood and urine tests (negative no cancer, I'll quickly say!). In twenty years she has never called to talk to me, so you better believe my heart was racing, given the circumstances of the call. I tell you all this because cancer is all around us, and we all know the inspirational, impossible survival stories, too. I tell them all the time as a kind of mantra held up against the possible cancer darkness.Notaro’s book is less funny than serious and sentimental and maybe inspirational in the way of most cancer survival memoirs. That's mainly why she wrote the book, to inspire others, she says. She tells of her wild mom (especially and dad, and shares letters from them about her, she finds love, she finds even greater success, she reconciles with her step-Dad, and so on. It’s okay, it’s good. I was told it would be edgier and funnier, but it's okay, even a comedian has the right to tell her double mastectomy story (though I have heard she continues to work to find ways to make it funny, for which hundreds of thousands thank her, I'm sure). If you have cancer or have deep experience with it one way or the other, or you knew of The Performance and want to hear all the backstories of that time, you might want to read this. But I say nothing in the book quite matches the electricity of that extraordinary stand-up performance (you can listen to the whole thing on Live) and (I heard from J) also a documentary about her I have yet to see.

Don't believe the title for a nanosecond--Tig is amazing! As the last person to hear of Tig Notaro, the only one to meet her through this intriguing autobiography, I am blown away by what she's accomplished. She performs a fabulous narration about the challenges that she's surmounted as an adult--and the incredibly inspiring outcome of her childhood.

An intense, darkly funny, inspiring memoir about a pretty unbelievable year in the life of comedian Tig Notaro. I can't quite put my finger on what exactly it is that I love about how she puts things. I think it's her sense of humour, for sure, but also her deadpan voice and her generosity and her honesty. Yeah, maybe that's it.

"The scary beauty of life is that cancer can be around the corner just as a Grammy nomination can be." I was only vaguely familiar with Tig Notaro prior to snagging this on an ebook deal recently. Anyone who can keep a sense of humor through tragedy is my kind of human being. This was a very solid memoir.

See more reviews like this at Brian's Book BlogAn amazing and real storyIf you are thinking about reading or listening to this book, I would hope that you know of Tig Notaro. If you don't do yourself a favor and check out her amazing, deep, and real live album: "Live" first.It's amazing what one person can be forced to endure. Tig's life seemed to be on the normal arc of a stand-up comedian. She was performing, making money from gigs, and touring. She then suffered from one of the worst streaks of health and bad news that you could imagine. Pneumonia, C-DIFF, her mother dying in a freak accident, going through a breakup with her girlfriend, then finding out she had stage 2 invasive breast cancer. Yes, you read all of that right.Just an upfront warning: this book will make you feel. It might not make you cry (I have no way of knowing what will and won't make people cry) but it did make me sob quietly a few times on my way to or from work.I knew a lot of this story from different forms: her documentary on Netflix, her live album "Live", and her show on Amazon Prime: One Mississippi. But hearing her tell all of these stories in such detail is an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. I feel like I personally know Tig after listening to this audiobook. I'm so happy that she took the time to tell her story. I know that this book will help others get through dark parts of their life... and it it doesn't they can go to hell.I'm Just A Person is as real as an audiobook memoir can get. Tig's ability to tell this extremely hard collection of stories make you like her even more than you already did.Tig, I think that we all have a percentage of life left. You may have a 93 percent chance of life, and I'm glad to hear that you are living it. I hope that others will do the same. Even without knowing this number.

What with the stand-up, the articles, the podcast interviews, the TV show, the documentary... nobody can get enough of this woman! (I love looking at her too: she has beautiful eyes!!)If you know of this book, you know what it's about, and if you're interested in it you should read it (omg so hungover I can't bloody think.)

I rated it five stars because I love her. If you love her, you'll appreciate this memoir. Tig Notaro's climb from a high school dropout in Mississippi to a well-known comic, TV producer, and published author is the kind of success story I love to read about in memoirs. She goes more in depth about her illnesses and her relationship with her mom than she did in her Netflix documentary, "Tig". Stephanie isn't mentioned until the two chapters, but it's the sweetest part of the book. Parts of it were funny, but I don't think "humor" is the most appropriate category for it. It didn't feel like she wrote it for laughs.I saw her in Dallas recently and she was every bit as amazing as I thought she'd be. Her shows are an experience!

Tig is an absolute treasure, and I'm truly surprised she doesn't have a zillion fans. This book, One Mississippi, Tig the documentary, her standup...all wins. ❤️In case you're not acquainted, "In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup, and then she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Hit with this devastating barrage, Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words: 'Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer.'"yeeeeeah. The set went viral, she sort of blew up, and I feel grateful that meant I got wind of her. If you like hearing people's stories, check out this book; if you like standup, listen to hers; if you like shows with heart and comedy, watch One Mississippi. Highly recommend.

damn girl been thru it

Tig Notaro is possibly my favorite stand-up comic. I'll admit I'm a little obsessive about listening to her podcasts, watching her stand-up and now, reading her book. As such, I knew much of what was written about here - her childhood, a lifetime of trauma compressed into a two or so year period, an