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just_one_more_paige's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
So, this book was one of the many books "donated" to the library while we were physically closed during COVID (and were not accepting donations). But you can't stop people from putting whatever they want in the book drop, as it turns out. Anyways, in this case, it turned out pretty well for me, as I'd been interested in reading it and was able to grab it for myself!
Diaz's memoir covers her childhood and adolescence in both Puerto Rico and Miami. And what an intense and difficult youth it was. Every day, or so it seemed, she faced some kind of violence and trauma, from the inconsistencies in her home life (her father's infidelity/absenses, her maternal grandmother's judgement, her mother's battle with schizophrenia, her brother's violence) to the violence of her schools/neighborhoods (fights, substance misuse, abusive relationships, phsyical and sexual assault) to her own internal struggles with mental health (depression, suicide attempts, self-worth and identity) to the intergenerational trauma of colonialism. And yet, there are shining moments of support from her sister and close friends and paternal grandmother that give hope and a reason to push forward despite everything.
Honestly, this memoir was a lot. I don't know if I was fully aware of what I was getting into when I started reading/listening, if I'm being honest. There was not a single moment or page that didn't need some kind of content warning. It was like hit after hit that, as it was difficult to absorb for myself as the reader, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live. While all of these were affecting and a bit overwhelming, there was a particular thread, that of the real life case of Lazaro Figueroa, that was carried through the majority of the book that really hit me the deepest. I hadn't heard of it before, but the way Diaz follows it as it happens, refers back to it throughout, and reaches out to Figeroa's mother in prison, intertwining that story with her own speculations about motherhood and what it meant to her to be so profoundly let down by her own mother, the one person who is supposed to unconditionally and fully care for you, was very affecting.
I will say that I did get a bit lost in the timeline, which absolutely could have been intentional, but when something was happening or how it fit into the larger picture of Diaz's life always felt just a bit out of my grasp. This was likely exacerbated by the style of her writing, as there were numerous times when she would describe a situation/emotion/reaction, followed by a statement like "but I wouldn't know that til later." So it was foreshadowed in that way and then more fully addressed later on and that jumping around left me feeling unmoored. However, like I said, that may have been the point, as imparting that feeling on the reader seems like another way Diaz communicated her own feelings of confusion and not-belonging as she grew up.
Really, as with all memoirs, it's hard to write a full-on review. A person's life/experience is their own, to share or not as they see fit (and in this case, are brave enough to do). So other than what I've already touched on, and reiterating the warnings to future readers to be careful with the content, I'll just leave you with the overall vibe that I got while reading this. Despite the harshness of Diaz's life, this power in this memoir came in the form of her ode to all the "ordinary girls" like herself, the vividness and fierceness in her words and in sharing her story in order to recognize these lives like her own. And it was a potent message.
(A final note, the Goodreads blurb for this one compares it to memoirs like Westover's Educated and Mailhot's Heart Berries and I have to be honest, those comparisons seem spot on to me, considering the intensity of the story/topics. Also, the style of writing, with Ordinary Girls as a sort of mix of those two narrative and poetic styles, respectively.)
“This was our history, I would eventually learn. We’d come from uprisings against colonial rule, slavery, massacres, erasure. We’d carried histories of resistance, of protest.”
“We’re supposed to love our mothers. We’re supposed to trust them and need them and miss them when they’re gone. But what if that same person, the one who’s supposed to love you more than anyone else in the world, the one who’s supposed to protect you, is also the one who hurts you the most?”
“Everybody wanted to control what we wore, what we did, who we did it with. We were not the girls they wanted us to be. We were not allowed to talk like this, to want like this, were not supposed to feel the kind of desire you feel at thirteen, at fourteen. What kind of girl, they loved to say. What kind of girl, even as they took what we gave, took what we tried to hold on to. Our voices. Our bodies. We were trying to live, but the world was doing its best to kill us.”
“…for the first time in my life, I believed I could be good at something, that I could have a life full of promise and opportunity. It was the first time in my life that people expected me to succeed, that they looked at me and saw someone who was smart, and capable, with a future. And it scared the hell out of me. It had been easier to let people assume I would end up dead, or in jail, or strung out and living on the streets. It had been easier to want nothing, to believe in nothing.”
“This is who I write about and who I write for. For the girls they were, the girl I was, for girls everywhere who are just like we used to me. For the black and brown girls. For the girls on the merry-go-round making the world spin. For the wild girls and the party girls, the loudmouths an troublemakers. For the girls who are angry and lost. For the girls who never saw themselves in books. For the girls who love other girls, sometimes in secret. For the girls who believe in monsters. For the girls on the edge who are ready to fly. For the ordinary girls. For all the girls who broke my heart. And their mothers. And their daughters.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Body shaming, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Violence, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Rape, Physical abuse, and Mental illness
Moderate: Homophobia and Injury/Injury detail
jackielynlyn's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Racism, Racial slurs, Rape, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Self harm, and Physical abuse
Minor: Sexual violence and Gun violence
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