The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir

“Looking back, it still fascinates me how a single, seemingly ordinary phone call changed my life. It wasn’t accompanied by a heavenly chord from a choir of angels, or a sudden beam of sunlight bursting through the overcast sky into my apartment window, not so much as a twinge of awareness on my part that something huge was happening, just an old call from my old friend Tony Stevens.”

In the memoir’s opening passage, Bishop emphasizes the key role of serendipity in shaping her life. Describing the phone call that launched her acting career in A Chorus Line, the author underscores that the momentous nature of such moments is only clear in retrospect. Although her dreams were about to come true, no “choir of angels” signaled that this was the case.

“From childhood on, not wanting children was as unapologetic a fact about me as my ethnicity, and I was just as unapologetic about it as an adult, which put me on the receiving end of such mystifying reactions as ‘You don’t really know what it’s like to be a woman until you have children’ and ‘Are you a lesbian?’ Well, yes I do, and no, I’m not, so take it or leave it.”

Bishop’s integrity and confidence are illustrated in her description of how others responded to her decision not to have children. The repetition of the adjective “unapologetic,” combined with the statement “take it or leave it,” emphasizes her lack of interest in meeting societal expectations of womanhood. The passage is typical of the author’s frank, direct tone.

“I felt pretty there. I belonged there. I excelled there. In many ways, the ballet saved me from a life with no purpose, no sense of direction, and no self-confidence, other than having a lot of whatever the hell ‘flair’ was.”

Describing the happiness she experienced in ballet classes as a child, the author underlines The Fulfilment Derived from Artistic Expression. Bishop emphasizes how ballet provided the elements that were missing from her life: purpose, direction, and self-confidence. The use of anaphora in the triple repetition of “I” underlines the positive sense of self she gained from her dancing classes.