Book Club: I’m Just A Person, Chapter 2

Welcome to the comments and discussion of Chapter 2: Are You My Mother of the book, I’m Just A Person by Tig Notaro! Catch up on Chapter 1: Over My Mother’s Dead Body.

Let’s get started!  Chapter 2!

Mallory:

So far, this book is very cancer unrelated.  Anyone having trouble with that?  Personally, I’m loving the writing style that Tig offers.  Her unabashed honesty and sense of self is so refreshing in a world of polished selfies and rewritten personal histories.  I find myself always wanting to read the next chapter.  This chapter brought us through her childhood and into adolescence and early adulthood.  Tig defined her own success and worked hard to support herself early on.

While I grew up in a very different sort of household than Tig describes, I can most definitely relate to expecting different behaviors or qualities from someone than those they are willing or able to offer.  It can be a complicated grieving process and one that happens throughout our lives with different sets of people.  Reading Tig’s expectations of her mother made me feel less isolated in the expectations that I’ve held for my own parents, or for my friends while I was going through treatments and felt so alone and unsupported.

I’m eager to see how Tig develops through the rest of the book.  What piece of Tig’s story has spoken to you so far?

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Thanks for joining us for Chapter 2: Are You My Mother of I’m Just A Person!  Join in next Monday for Chapter 3: The Downfall.

If you’re just joining us, here are some logistics:

We will talk about a chapter each Monday until the book is done.  Then, we’ll use one more Monday to talk about general feelings from the book and anything else you’d like to discuss.  Join in, in the comments every week!  At the end, we’ll have a book club discussion via video chat!  Also, there will probably be spoilers.  Read along with us!

How are you enjoying our young adult cancer book club?