Winner of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction
Winner of a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal
A 2020 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
A Summer/Fall 2019 Indies Introduce Selection
A Fall 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Notable Selection
One of Time Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated of 2019
One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
One of The Week's Most Anticipated Books of 2019
One of CBC Radio Canada's Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
One of Bustle's Best New Books of Fall 2019
One of Autostraddle's Most Anticipated Queer & Feminist Books of Fall 2019
One of The Rumpus' Most Anticipated of 2019
A LibraryReads October Pick
One of NBC News' 15 Great New Books by Latino Authors
One of Electric Literature's 20 Best Debuts of 2019
One of BuzzFeed's 11 Must-Read Memoirs Coming Out in Fall
One of Oprah Magazine's 13 Books About Immigration to Read this Fall
One of Good Housekeeping's 50 Best Books of 2019
Order now! Paperback available June 2, 2020.
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One of the Must-Read Books of 2019 According to O: The Oprah Magazine * Time * Bustle * Electric Literature * Publishers Weekly * The Millions * The Week * Good Housekeeping
In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age.
While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. 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. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
Reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz’s memoir provides a vivid portrait of a life lived in (and beyond) the borders of Puerto Rico and its complicated history—and reads as electrically as a novel.
In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age.
While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. 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. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
Reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz’s memoir provides a vivid portrait of a life lived in (and beyond) the borders of Puerto Rico and its complicated history—and reads as electrically as a novel.
“[A] compelling debut. A must-read memoir on vulnerability, courage, and everything in between from a standout writer.”
- Library Journal, starred review
“[A] strong debut . . . gripping . . . Díaz’s empowering book wonderfully portrays the female struggle and the patterns of family dysfunction.”
- Publishers Weekly
“A fierce, unflinching account of ordinary girls leading extraordinary lives.”
- Poets & Writers
“Every so often you discover a voice that just floors you—or rather, feels like it can bulldoze something in your very soul. This fall, that voice belongs to Jaquira Díaz.”
- The Week (25 Books to Read in the Second Half of 2019)
“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. For years, Díaz has dazzled in shorter formats—stories, essays, etc.—and her entrée into longer lengths is very welcome.”
- The Millions (Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview)
“Jaquira Díaz’s Ordinary Girls is more than a memoir. It is an awe-inspiring, middle-finger-waving rejection of the cult and culture of shame that pervades Latinx communities . . . an unflinching yet compassionate dissection of the pain, love, and violence that cast Díaz’s life in equal parts light and shadow . . . a love letter to the girls who have been stigmatized and silenced and hurt and left behind, to those of us whose families are both a source of incredible joy and immense pain, to all of us who contemplated dying more times than we could count and came back up for air at the last possible second . . . a homecoming for those of us who miss our pátria, a mirror for those of us looking for our ancestors . . . a history of Puerto Rico that trickles into the present, right up until the devastating aftermath of Hurricane María. And perhaps most importantly, Ordinary Girls is a reminder to keep surviving in whatever way we know how, so that we can one day write ourselves out of despair and into the people we could be—without shame.”
- Women’s Review of Books
“Every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.”
- Autostraddle
“A candid and compelling memoir . . . Díaz's strength lies in how she can enliven the places she inhabits . . . While the story of a typical displaced girl's life could have been tragic, Díaz takes charge, changes her trajectory, and tells a tale of an individual who ultimately triumphs. Teens may relate to Díaz's adolescent struggles, including sexual curiosity, while being moved by her resilience.”
- Booklist
“Inventive . . . the literary bells and whistles give her story a broader interest than many memoirs . . . This book isn't just about the author's quest for self-determination; it's also about Puerto Rico's. An unusually creative memoir of a bicultural life.”
- Kirkus Reviews
“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. Through one family’s story, we learn about challenges of poverty, migration, uprootedness, addiction, sexism, racism--but also about the triumphant, spirited storyteller who survives to tell the tale. Jaquira Díaz is our contemporary Scheherazade, telling stories to keep herself alive and whole, and us her readers mesmerized and wanting more. And we get it: there is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime.”
- Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies
“Ordinary Girls is a life story of astonishing honesty and beauty and power, a memoir of breath and rhythm and blood-red struggle, a book for everyone who has ever felt homesick inside their own skin, and for those who, like Díaz, sing the marvelous song of themselves at top volume.”
- Karen Russell, author of Orange World
“Jaquira Díaz writes about ordinary girls living extraordinary lives. And Díaz is no ordinary observer. She is a wondrous survivor, a woman who has claimed her own voice, a writer who writes for those who have no voice, for the black and brown girls 'who never saw themselves in books.' Jaquira Díaz writes about them with love. How extraordinary is that!”
- Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
“Jaquira Díaz is an unstoppable force. Her writing is alive with power. I stand in awe of what she brings us. The future is here.”
- Luís Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels
"Díaz blazes a bold path from the depths of the heart and guts of girls up through their fiercely beautiful throats into unstoppable song. Ordinary Girls risks dipping into family fractures, identity traumas, and the strained lines between cultures with language so fierce in places I bit my tongue, so tender in places I felt humming in my skin. Sometimes the repressed, oppressed girl, against all odds, goes back to get her own body and voice. This book will save lives.”
- Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan
“Ordinary Girls crackles with life! Díaz’s memoir vividly portrays life growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, poverty, drug abuse, mental illness, ‘ordinary girls,’ suicide, and being gay in a culture that doesn’t accept homosexuality. The language has a lively rhythm reflective of the staccato quality of Díaz’s early years. The is the gritty story of a survivor who fought to be seen as who she is.”
- Sally Wizik Wills, Beagle and Wolf Books & Bindery, Park Rapids, MN
“Ordinary Girls is the rare type of memoir that stuck with me long after I stopped reading; phrases and moments kept coming back to me at random times throughout my day. Created by an author at the top of her craft, it’s gorgeous and heartbreaking, hopeful and devastating. Jaquira Díaz’s fascinating story takes us from her childhood in the projects of Puerto Rico, where we witness her mother’s worsening schizophrenia and drug addiction, to Díaz’s teenage years in Miami, filled with fights, runaway attempts, sexual assault, drug use, and stints in jail, but also moments of love and brilliance — and, finally, to adulthood, where Díaz wrestles with the demons that chased her all her life and begins to learn what she really wants. If you’re looking for a memoir dealing with queer identity, addiction, family struggles, abuse, poverty, Puerto Rican history, friendship, or the power of the written word — or if you just want a lyrical and heartbreaking story that will keep you enthralled from the first sentence — seek no further. This is a master class in the art of the memoir, and I cannot wait to see what Díaz does next.”
- Elissa Sweet, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT
“The girls of Ordinary Girls are anything but ordinary. Jaquira Díaz rips out the heart of her past, when she felt helpless, young, and willing to end it all, and sends it out dancing, raises it up, and uses it to enact change. Ordinary Girls is a brave embracing of a conflicted, traumatized past and an extolling of life.”
- Kat Baird, The Book Bin, Corvallis, OR
“It takes a special writer to craft a memoir that’s equal parts harrowing and hopeful, clear-eyed and emotionally acute...and that’s exactly what Jaquira Díaz has done here. She was still a child when her family moved from Puerto Rico to the slums of Miami, and she spent her teenage years negotiating a family life of addiction, dysfunction, and mental illness. Despite her experiences with crime and violence, Díaz finds solace in her friendships, strength in her heritage, and always a way forward. This is an utterly beautiful and vibrant book.”
- Erika VanDam, RoscoeBooks, Chicago, IL
- Library Journal, starred review
“[A] strong debut . . . gripping . . . Díaz’s empowering book wonderfully portrays the female struggle and the patterns of family dysfunction.”
- Publishers Weekly
“A fierce, unflinching account of ordinary girls leading extraordinary lives.”
- Poets & Writers
“Every so often you discover a voice that just floors you—or rather, feels like it can bulldoze something in your very soul. This fall, that voice belongs to Jaquira Díaz.”
- The Week (25 Books to Read in the Second Half of 2019)
“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. For years, Díaz has dazzled in shorter formats—stories, essays, etc.—and her entrée into longer lengths is very welcome.”
- The Millions (Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview)
“Jaquira Díaz’s Ordinary Girls is more than a memoir. It is an awe-inspiring, middle-finger-waving rejection of the cult and culture of shame that pervades Latinx communities . . . an unflinching yet compassionate dissection of the pain, love, and violence that cast Díaz’s life in equal parts light and shadow . . . a love letter to the girls who have been stigmatized and silenced and hurt and left behind, to those of us whose families are both a source of incredible joy and immense pain, to all of us who contemplated dying more times than we could count and came back up for air at the last possible second . . . a homecoming for those of us who miss our pátria, a mirror for those of us looking for our ancestors . . . a history of Puerto Rico that trickles into the present, right up until the devastating aftermath of Hurricane María. And perhaps most importantly, Ordinary Girls is a reminder to keep surviving in whatever way we know how, so that we can one day write ourselves out of despair and into the people we could be—without shame.”
- Women’s Review of Books
“Every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.”
- Autostraddle
“A candid and compelling memoir . . . Díaz's strength lies in how she can enliven the places she inhabits . . . While the story of a typical displaced girl's life could have been tragic, Díaz takes charge, changes her trajectory, and tells a tale of an individual who ultimately triumphs. Teens may relate to Díaz's adolescent struggles, including sexual curiosity, while being moved by her resilience.”
- Booklist
“Inventive . . . the literary bells and whistles give her story a broader interest than many memoirs . . . This book isn't just about the author's quest for self-determination; it's also about Puerto Rico's. An unusually creative memoir of a bicultural life.”
- Kirkus Reviews
“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. Through one family’s story, we learn about challenges of poverty, migration, uprootedness, addiction, sexism, racism--but also about the triumphant, spirited storyteller who survives to tell the tale. Jaquira Díaz is our contemporary Scheherazade, telling stories to keep herself alive and whole, and us her readers mesmerized and wanting more. And we get it: there is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime.”
- Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies
“Ordinary Girls is a life story of astonishing honesty and beauty and power, a memoir of breath and rhythm and blood-red struggle, a book for everyone who has ever felt homesick inside their own skin, and for those who, like Díaz, sing the marvelous song of themselves at top volume.”
- Karen Russell, author of Orange World
“Jaquira Díaz writes about ordinary girls living extraordinary lives. And Díaz is no ordinary observer. She is a wondrous survivor, a woman who has claimed her own voice, a writer who writes for those who have no voice, for the black and brown girls 'who never saw themselves in books.' Jaquira Díaz writes about them with love. How extraordinary is that!”
- Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
“Jaquira Díaz is an unstoppable force. Her writing is alive with power. I stand in awe of what she brings us. The future is here.”
- Luís Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels
"Díaz blazes a bold path from the depths of the heart and guts of girls up through their fiercely beautiful throats into unstoppable song. Ordinary Girls risks dipping into family fractures, identity traumas, and the strained lines between cultures with language so fierce in places I bit my tongue, so tender in places I felt humming in my skin. Sometimes the repressed, oppressed girl, against all odds, goes back to get her own body and voice. This book will save lives.”
- Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan
“Ordinary Girls crackles with life! Díaz’s memoir vividly portrays life growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, poverty, drug abuse, mental illness, ‘ordinary girls,’ suicide, and being gay in a culture that doesn’t accept homosexuality. The language has a lively rhythm reflective of the staccato quality of Díaz’s early years. The is the gritty story of a survivor who fought to be seen as who she is.”
- Sally Wizik Wills, Beagle and Wolf Books & Bindery, Park Rapids, MN
“Ordinary Girls is the rare type of memoir that stuck with me long after I stopped reading; phrases and moments kept coming back to me at random times throughout my day. Created by an author at the top of her craft, it’s gorgeous and heartbreaking, hopeful and devastating. Jaquira Díaz’s fascinating story takes us from her childhood in the projects of Puerto Rico, where we witness her mother’s worsening schizophrenia and drug addiction, to Díaz’s teenage years in Miami, filled with fights, runaway attempts, sexual assault, drug use, and stints in jail, but also moments of love and brilliance — and, finally, to adulthood, where Díaz wrestles with the demons that chased her all her life and begins to learn what she really wants. If you’re looking for a memoir dealing with queer identity, addiction, family struggles, abuse, poverty, Puerto Rican history, friendship, or the power of the written word — or if you just want a lyrical and heartbreaking story that will keep you enthralled from the first sentence — seek no further. This is a master class in the art of the memoir, and I cannot wait to see what Díaz does next.”
- Elissa Sweet, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT
“The girls of Ordinary Girls are anything but ordinary. Jaquira Díaz rips out the heart of her past, when she felt helpless, young, and willing to end it all, and sends it out dancing, raises it up, and uses it to enact change. Ordinary Girls is a brave embracing of a conflicted, traumatized past and an extolling of life.”
- Kat Baird, The Book Bin, Corvallis, OR
“It takes a special writer to craft a memoir that’s equal parts harrowing and hopeful, clear-eyed and emotionally acute...and that’s exactly what Jaquira Díaz has done here. She was still a child when her family moved from Puerto Rico to the slums of Miami, and she spent her teenage years negotiating a family life of addiction, dysfunction, and mental illness. Despite her experiences with crime and violence, Díaz finds solace in her friendships, strength in her heritage, and always a way forward. This is an utterly beautiful and vibrant book.”
- Erika VanDam, RoscoeBooks, Chicago, IL