A Summer/Fall 2019 Indies Introduce Selection
A Fall 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated of 2019
One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
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Ordinary Girls is a fierce, beautiful, and unflinching memoir from a wildly talented debut author. 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. 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 triumphantly maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
With a story reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz delivers a memoir that 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 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 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