Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is yet another book I have been meaning to get into and the hype did not disappoint. This young adult fantasy book is set in Chelsea, Massachusetts and follows Sophia a teenage girl with Polish ancestry. Sophia and her best friend Ella like to play the pass-out game because it’s the onlyRead More
Elinor reviews How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea
My wife and I are currently trying to buy a house, which is surreal, and it’s made me wonder about what it means to be–or feel like–an adult. Like magic, I found a copy of Michelle Tea’s latest memoir on that very topic. Since I’m a fan of Tea’s other writing, I picked it up.Read More
Hannah reviews Mermaid In Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea
This book is a gift to the world. As I read it I imagined wrapping it up in pretty colored paper and giving it to someone I love, to imagine them discovering it for the first time. Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is everything I’ve ever wanted from a Young Adult, “Chosen One” fantasy novel. I began thisRead More
Jess reviews Coal To Diamonds by Beth Ditto (with Michelle Tea)
Coal To Diamonds (2012) is Beth Ditto’s raw and demanding memoir. Written with Michelle Tea, Ditto holds nothing back, sharing family history, The Gossip’s gossip and her thoughts on the world at large. I’ll be honest, I went into Coal To Diamonds with no expectations. I didn’t know about the band The Gossip (sorry fans),Read More
Casey reviews Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea
I feel a bit like a terrible literary queer when I say that I haven’t read much of Michelle Tea—I actually saw the film version of Valencia when it was recently at Vancouver’s queer film festival, and I haven’t read the book yet! While Michelle Tea was in town for the screening, though, I hadRead More
Laura reviews Sister Spit edited by Michelle Tea
In the introduction to Sister Spit: Writing, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road, editor Michelle Tea proudly writes that Sister Spit is what she did instead of college. Reading this collection is like digging through a pile of her study group’s crumpled looseleaf notes at the end of the semester. It’s enough to get theRead More
Mfred reviews Valencia by Michelle Tea
What to say about this book? I can’t quite put my finger on Valencia, can’t pin it down or summarize my reaction to it. Perhaps my first mistake was to read the introduction. My copy is a reprint, with Tea adding commentary on her own ambivalent feelings regarding the semi-autobiographical story of being young, queer, drunkRead More
Guest Lesbrarian Rie reviews The Chelsea Whistle
Previous to reading The Chelsea Whistle, I’d attempted a memoir by a smothered-but-privileged writer. This history of Tea’s youth soared where that failed. It’s all those adjectives given to books that end up written by a mom in the midwest–raw, gritty, real, hopeful–but this one’s real. It’s the brutality of childhood that we all experience,Read More