Well, thank heaven for this year's Big Book Brouhaha, or I might never have heard of this author! PS: I have updated my rating because the book has stayed with me and is one of the best memoirs I read this year and I read a lot. I cannot recommend this highly enough: if you like memoirs, if you like voices that are unique, if you like to be viscerally moved, if you like good books. The last half builds like crescendo and when I realized what she was leading up to, I was knocked aside – her way of reaching her points from different angles really took me unawares here. Her art is clever and intellectual without losing an emotional heart, the whole book being intricately structured (not unlike a dance) while still packing a punch you would not believe. She puts herself at the centre of her art and I adore that (nothing new here). Myriam Gurba’s tone is abrasive and funny like my favourite essayists she is unapologetically honest and herself and, yes, sometimes mean. This memoir will for sure stay with me and I can already see it featuring on my best of the year list (which is still a long way off). Myriam Gurba has a way of structuring her thoughts, of coming at her point from different angles that I found particularly brilliant. But once I did, it was beyond incredible.
The only reason this was not quite a five star read for me was because it took me about 60 pages to find my rhythm with this book (and the book is not particularly long). She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders. She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She's the author of Dahlia Season (2007, Manic D) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Wish You Were Me (2011, Future Tense Books), and Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015, Manic D). Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating.īeing mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. This is a confident, funny, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Mean turns what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. Myriam Gurba's debut is the bold and hilarious tale of her coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana.
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