Bossypants is a memoir by Tina Fey which recounts episodes from her life in conjunction with her career as a comedian and writer for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock. Tina welcomes readers and explains that everyone will find something of relevance in her book. She also explains that her book is about the child growing into an adult who still wants to be a child. Born in 1970 in a suburb of Philadelphia to two loving parents, Jeanne and Don, Tina remembers enjoying her childhood. Among the reasons is having such a strong presence by way of her father, who was firm but loving in raising Tina.

As a teenager, Tina was exposed to acting while working at a local summer theater camp. There, she helped sabotage another girl’s acting in order to get revenge on her for stealing Tina’s boyfriend. Tina explains that this sort of behavior–of females hurting females–is unacceptable. Tina also relates her difficulties in finding dates or feeling like she truly fit in through college, as blonde girls were the “in-thing.” Following college and having earned a degree in drama, Tina moved to Chicago where she took work at the local YMCA before being signed on with the Second City, a well-known improv and comedy group theater. It is through the Second City that Tina realized just how much she loved the art of improv, because it forces people to use their intelligence, to be creative, and to work without a script, props, or anything else. She also came to love the Second City because it is where she met her future husband, Jeff.

As Tina writes, she frequently interrupts her narrative with aside chapters, ranging on everything from the use of Photoshop (which she believes is relatively harmless) to weight (which she believes everyone, thin or fat, should leave everyone alone about) before returning to the arc of her life. From the Second City, Tina was hired to write for Saturday Night Live in 1997. She came to work alongside her good friend, Amy Poehler, who taught Tina that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about what someone is doing, advice which Tina then conveys to the reader. She also notes that appearances of sexism might not always be so, such as when the men involved with SNL worried over filming a mock maxi pad ad, not because they were sexist, but because they knew next to nothing about maxi pads. With advice and inspiration from a colleague, Tina pitched the idea for 30 Rock to NBC, and was given the green light.

Tina was later thrilled to have her own daughter, Alice, and did her best to balance a career of writing for SNL, overseeing 30 Rock, and having a home life. Things took a dramatic turn for her in 2008 when she portrayed Sarah Palin throughout that season of SNL. She received rave reviews from some, and strong criticism and hate mail from others. Tina insists that most people misunderstood the portrayal of Palin, especially the first one where Tina’s Palin appeared with a mock Hillary Clinton, because the portrayal was meant as a stand against sexism regardless as to which side Palin and Clinton were on politically. Tina concludes her memoir by describing her struggle over whether or not to have a second child–something which she does not provide an answer to as the memoir ends.