The Best of Contemporary Women’s Humor is an anthology with a twist: humorous short stories, poetry, songs, and cartoons–all from the pens of women, and all donated to benefit charities. It will entertain readers, sustain them, and provide hours of reading pleasure.
The gems here treat topics such as politics, relationships, parents, hair, dieting, and aging with wry irreverence. It features … irreverence. It features humor from some of the most well-known women writers today: Wendy Wasserstein, Delia Ephron, Anna Quindlen, Kathy Najimy, Gloria Steinem, Christine Lavin, and many others. Inside cover illustration and chapter openers by Flash Rosenberg.
And all this funny business is for three good causes: The royalties and a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to The American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO).
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I’ve always loved Erma Bombeck. My mom was a fan in the 70s so as a teen, I saw her stacks on the end table and devoured them too. Her humorous style inadvertently seeped into my own like osmosis.
So when I was stocking up for a long flight in 2005, I spotted Life’s a Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women’s Humor in a bookstore. I knew I had to have it. It’s packed to the seams with comedic bits, flash fiction and longer pieces, comic sketches, and cartoon panels. My favorite comic strip, For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston, even makes a few appearances!
What a hoot revisiting Bombeck’s work again as well as the other clever contributions. I wish we were bombarded more by Erma –there’s only one piece and sadly it’s a shame we lost her too soon–but it’s a riot discovering other authors and comedy writers like Delia Ephron, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Kathy Najimy, Anna Quindlen, Yeardley Smith, Judith Viorst, Cathy Guisewite, Marta Kauffman and a plethora of others.
A compilation from the 90s, the sections are divided into the life cycles and mood swings we ladies go through as well as poking fun at the fellas, but underneath the laughs shine a touching caboodle of truth.
I especially liked the “Travel Diary” of Iceland by M Sweeney Lawless, where each dark, cold day runs into the next in a satirical account of the same ole same ole, and there’s one called “Bullwinkle,” by Susan B. Murray where her mother’s sex ed drawings of a uterus look suspiciously like Bullwinkle while the bunched up male parts resemble a subway map of the New York City boroughs.
I also got a kick out of the Totally Bitchin’ Babes chapter with “The Montana Nine,” by Christine Lavin, who has several pieces in the book. During a hotel gig, Lavin had a run-in with this wise gang of feisty senior citizens out on their annual Girls Trip. The results are motivating.
I also chuckled at a chapter called, The Estrogen Files which contains the side-splitting bit, “Rosebud,” by Jane Read Martin. Written as a sitcom, the snappy dialogue leads to a genius punchline! Be careful what you dish to friends on the pedicure thrones. The Korean nail ladies lingo is a hilarious echo during the convo.
As a fellow female writer and humor fan, this book is a valuable find on my shelf. Embracing my femme fatale side, it has me jonesing for the honor of such inclusion in an anthology someday.
Funny, as much as I love this book, seven years after owning “Life’s a Stitch,” I forgot about this gem until we moved and joyfully rediscovered the hidden treasure while unpacking. I read every tale cover-to-cover this time, well, in random order, but when initially perusing the pages, I read only a few selections that piqued my interest.
Now, here it is seven years later once more, and I just joined a women’s writer’s Facebook group. Suddenly this book flashed into my mind. Seems celebrating the sisterhood is a seven-year itch kind of thing, so I’m diving in yet again.