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I read this for a 1973 project I'm working on. I knew it was a famous coming of age lesbian story, but nothing else. Turns out the protagonist is adopted with a hateful mother and spends a lot of the book in Ft. Lauderdale not too long before I grew up. So it turned out to be a bit of nostalgia and I could really identify with the kind of alone in the world she was. But there is a lot of offensive shit in this book - rape, incest, racism... And don't expect a lot of reflection. But there's not a lot of time to reflect when you're young and have to be constantly prepared to fight.

Having a hard time rating this one, but I'm rounding up - I guess because it so well captures the cavernous gaps between even the closest humans and the disturbing absurdity of emotional control and impartiality.

If you are actually interested in the femicides in Juarez, you are going to be disappointed. Relatively little of the book is about that. It's mostly about how the artist ended up sculpting dead people and fugitives and what his process is. Interesting enough that I finished, but annoying in that it is advertised as a book about women in Juarez and is actually about a cocky dude from Philadelphia. If they wouldn't have titled and sold it as about femicides, it wouldn't feel like such a textbook example of men only interested in men even when supposedly writing about women. It's also big time copaganda.

It's always hard to rate books of essays because some parts are going to speak to you more than others, but I really have to give this one five stars. Consistently on point, diverse perspectives, and yet focused and energizing.

Worth it just for the Grief Suite essay alone, but be warned that even Dickens would have gone "damn, those are some long sentences."

Didn't even make it 50 pages. I think I'm just tired of this kind of white boy shtick. Everyone just trying to be Kurt Vonnegut and not really saying much.