Leia is With Us

When I heard that Carrie Fisher died in December of 2016, I was shocked.  She was a woman that I looked up to as a badass, mostly because of her role in Star Wars, but also partially because she gets to wield a flamethrower in The Blues Brothers.  If I ever get the chance to play with a flamethrower, I'm going to be so freaking happy.  Back to Star Wars.  Leia Organa is a character that epitomizes, to me, a strong woman decades before a movement.  Rarely, if ever, is she weak; she's constantly trying to figure out what to do next or jumping right into the fray.  She's fearless.  And, for Carrie Fisher, she is an iconic role.  From the white dress and cinnamon bun hair, to the famous bikini, to her more mature outfits as General Organa, Leia is an icon.  You see her, and you see Star Wars.  Fisher herself was a down to earth woman who said what she thought and didn't mince her words.  No wonder I looked up to her!

Fisher was also a writer.  She wrote screenplays and novels, and three memoirs.  I haven't read the first two, Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic, but I have read the last, The Princess Diarist.  This last memoir was published in 2016, just six weeks before Fisher's death, and it centers around one of the most formative events in her life: Filming Star Wars and becoming Leia Organa.  The book was prompted when Fisher found the journals that she kept while filming the movie.

The writing very much feels as if Fisher is telling you a story, and this is increased when you listen to the audiobook--it's narrated by Fisher.  It's a mix of "this is today" and "this is what happened" in the way that stories evolve.  Something may have happened then, such as when Fisher describes her obsession with lip gloss, but you compare it to a later event, such as no one having enough spit to imitate lip gloss except maybe Fisher's dog.  She's also very blunt.  Fisher comes right out and says that her mom offered to watch Fisher have sex and gives her pointers.  It makes the book very real.  Fisher also tells, possibly for the first time, I'd have to do more research, about her affair with the very married, nearly twice her age Harrison Ford.  Ford labeled their pairing "Carrison".  Included are some of the entries from her journal during this time, a mixture of prose and poetry.  It's interesting to see how carefully Fisher is to not mention something, and to see inside of her head.  She was nineteen and had gone into the moving hoping to have an affair.

I laughed, through the whole book, despite the tinge of sadness that Carrie Fisher is gone.  But when reading the acknowledgments, I lost it.  Fisher wrote "For my mother--for being too stubborn and thoughtful to die.  I love yo, but that whole emergency, almost dying thing, wasn't funny.  Don't even THINK about doing it again in any form."  Fisher's mother, Debbie Renoylds, died the day after her daughter.

I have lived in amazing times.  As many memes have posted of Princess Leia, I have lived to see my childhood princess become a general.  I can do anything I want to. 

Leia is with us all.