In Jenny Slate’s ‘Lifeform,’ She Has ‘Things to Say,’ But ‘Little to Prove’

The Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott

Jenny Slate is ready to be herself. “I think what is [evident] in my work is that through my own journey, not just through motherhood, but my own connection with myself as a developing artist, is that I just don’t feel myself flailing anymore.” She’s writing about this confidence in her new book of essays Lifeform (Little, Brown and Company, October 22), which depicts her unique journey into motherhood. She began writing the book out of a fear for losing her old self: “Just wanting to hold on to a life, my professional life and my identity within that, because I was very newly pregnant.” She found that it wasn’t her old self she was looking for, but this new person. “I feel that I increasingly have things to say, but really little to prove. And that is such a different thing. I don’t feel a desperation that I felt in my 20s and 30s.” And now, the comedian says, this new self is providing her with strength. “I have noticed whether I’m doing stand-up or I’m writing a book, I just have this sense, for the first time in my life, that there’s a super nice, stable mommy in the room, and the mom is me.”

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