Tagged with memoir

First off, let me defensively say that I found this book on the giveaway pile in my apartment building lobby, and it will go there again when I am done writing this review. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy reading this open and honest account of sex work. Angell makes it very clear that it is indeed work. Imagine having to spend nearly an hour and multiple tactics (on command) to give a coked out penis its happy ending!

May-lee Chai exposes the racist heartlessness of the heartland in her memoir of spending her teens in South Dakota (near the Pine Ridge reservation where someone perhaps other than Leonard Peltier shot two FBI agents a few years before the Chais moved there). She and her brother faced real danger from their fellow junior high and high school students, and several of the family’s dogs were killed on the Chai’s farm.

This is a fast, enjoyable read, and gives you an idea of what life is like for women in Afghanistan. Ms. Rodriguez is a likable if not always reliable narrator. As she says herself, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing much good here. There are many of us Westerners who want to help Afghan women, but our efforts don't always help them in the ways that we hope they will. ... It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women's lives differ from the complexities of ours." (p.259)

C's full-color handwritten and illustrated mini- 24-hourish perzine depicts her winter solstice day-in-the-life. She does a holiday craft project, but is unsuccessful at luring her son to participate--no Norman Rockwell memories for Emiliano! The next page is colored in saffron to match some Buddhist monks Celia saw waiting on the el train platform with her. She goes on to list and draw things she saw and heard in her travels that day and the contents of the single bag of stuff she bought at Whole Foods that set her back more than $80. There are also little anecdotes, music-inspired memories, and train haiku (morning meal is a / half gallon of Kemp's milk and / a "shut the fuck up").