Description

“We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would chop off our breasts…Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being rude to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being a bitch is more exhilarating. Being a bitch is spectacular” (17). Lyrical, choppy, blunt. Hilarious, absurd, horrifying. Brutal, bombastic, illuminating. A sideways how-to, if you will, for embracing the hard femme you’ve always wanted to be—then interrogating WHY you wanted to arrive there in the first place. Gurba juggles her PTSD with an urgency that reads as deft—her voice somewhere between twelve-year-old-boy and poet. But it’s all control. And perhaps, that’s exactly what this book is about. The control in detoothing rape, racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Like god damn, you’ll want to LOL and shout in the same line.

—Mason

* * *

True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.

We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating.

Being mean isn’t for everybody.

Being mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form.

These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. They’re queers.

Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. 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). She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders.