"A powerful memoir, heart-wrenching, inspiring, thoroughly engrossing, reminiscent of Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and more recently Tara Westover's Educated. "She is a wondrous survivor, a woman who has claimed her own voice, a writer who writes for those who have no voice." - Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and her entrée into longer lengths is very welcome." For years, Díaz has dazzled in shorter formats - stories, essays, etc. "In her debut memoir, Jaquira Díaz mines her experiences growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, grappling with traumas both personal and international, and over time converts them into something approaching hope and self-assurance. The Week (25 Books to Read in the Second Half of 2019) This fall, that voice belongs to Jaquira Díaz." "Every so often you discover a voice that just floors you - or rather, feels like it can bulldoze something in your very soul. "A fierce, unflinching account of ordinary girls leading extraordinary lives." Díaz's story is absolutely breathtaking." Like Maya Angalou's seminal 1969 memoir I know Why the Caged Bird Sings before it, Ordinary Girls, is brutally honest in a way that few books dare to be." "Diaz's resilience and writing abilities are far from ordinary she's an emissary from an experience that many young women have. Ordinary Girls is an electrifying, deftly-paced debut." For some of the book, it's humming like a hardworking engine - concealed under the hood, always present - but then there are moments when it combusts, bursting from the page in such a way that you, as a reader, have to pause and take a breath. "There's a certain ferocity throughout the entirety of Ordinary Girls.
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Good Housekeeping (The 50 Best Books of 2019 to Add to Your Reading List) "At once heartbreaking and throbbing with life in a rich portrait that's anything but ordinary." Against a Puerto Rican backdrop, this debut is compassionate, brave and forgiving." - Ms. A powerful and lyrical coming-of-age story, Ordinary Girls is a candid illustration of shame, despair and violence as well as joy and triumph. Time (Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019) "A dynamic examination of the power of persistence." Bustle (Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana) This book burns in the memory and makes one feel all the feelings. This book is a necessary read at a time where the system and the media is so often working against the survival of women of color. She complicates how we imagine girlhood and offers a beautiful memoir written with so much love, compassion and intelligence. "Díaz does not flinch with the hard-hitting details of growing up in communities that deserve our wholehearted attention. Díaz is a skilled writer the depth of layering is strong, from the details to the larger structures of identity, white supremacy, colonialism, and brown, queer, and femme resilience and resistance." It's the story of an ordinary girl it's the story of all of the extraordinary girls.
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"Every once in a while, a truly electric debut memoir comes along, and this fall, Ordinary Girls is it. Writing with refreshing honesty, she talks about despair, depression, love, and hope with such vibrancy that her vivid portrayal will stay with you long after the final page." " belongs on your must-read lists. Díaz is a masterful writer. Díaz's empowering book wonderfully portrays the female struggle and the patterns of family dysfunction." - Publishers Weekly A must-read memoir on vulnerability, courage, and everything in between from a standout writer." - Library Journal (starred review) Díaz triumphantly maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico's history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes: as her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was surrounded by the love of her friends as she longed for a family and home, she found instead a life upended by violence. Ordinary Girls is a fierce, beautiful, and unflinching memoir from a wildly talented debut author. "There is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime." -Julia Alvarez
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With a story reminiscent of Tara Westover's Educate and Roxane Gay's Hunger, celebrated writer Jaquira Díaz triumphantly maps a way out of despair toward love and hope and delivers a memoir that reads as electrically as a novel.