Mean

Encountered this memoir via the audiobook first and loved it. Listening to it being read can't show the prose/poetry of the text of it, and was glad to be surprised by it. One of those books that gets at the bitter truth of existence.Was sent promptly and was in great condition, as advertised. Thank you!

Myriam Gurba’s Mean is an open sore of a book, red and throbbing and fully alive. It begins abstractly, with something more like poetry than prose, before smacking the reader in the face with an image so violent that she is forced to snap to attention, fight-or-flight fully engaged by the end of page one. It does not let go from there.Gurba is fearless, man. Willing to open up that wound for you, to invite you inside and allow you to continue exploring. The last third of the book, especially, contains a gut-wrenching sincerity that attempts to make sense of her guilt, her anger, her fears, her pride, and her gratitude all at once. In short, the reader becomes a witness to her survival, and in doing so the reader becomes a survivor too.Regarding originality of style, the broken-up pieces of Mean are reflective of shattered remains after a violent act, and thus work beautifully to elevate the narrative to a higher plane. In spite of this, there are places in which the prose could have been tightened further. A few references seem needlessly explained (the Walkman on p. 142), while some sentences lack the brilliance of their predecessors (such as the series of nine straight subject-predicate sentences near the top of p. 104 that begins with “I skirted the Methodist church”). But these minor distractions are purely technical and do not take away from the strength of the whole. Even in the midst of the most profound and personal memoir, Gurba maintains a sense of literary aesthetic that maximizes the impact of her words.

A bold young woman full of anxiety and PTSD named Myriam seeks to heal herself and others in this unconventional and frank coming of age story. Mean by Myriam Gurba is a beautiful poetic mosaic full of true grit, intellect and humor.Whether she realizes it or not, Myriam’s fearless narrative helps the community as a whole. She heals herself and influences others to see that they too can live a good life. Myriam reflects on what happened during her formative years and what it meant. The reader gets to see how she feels, thinks, and reacts.Myriam searches for a deeper sense of self by writing an inspirational book. Shaping the narrative is her way of taking control. She picks and chooses how to tell her story and what to tell of her story. Myriam reminisces about her life but doesn’t pretend that the bad parts didn’t happen. She doesn’t pretend that everything is okay. In taking stock of her life, she heals and takes back her power.The protagonist came from a good family and was resilient even before the trauma. She felt good about her actions in the face of danger. She physically resisted. Now, in Mean, she conquers her haunting trauma.Like the phoenix, a bird in Egyptian mythology, that rises from its own ashes and is reborn, so too does this bold young woman, a symbol of healing and regeneration. Myriam Gurba is a storyteller that everyone should read.

This book made me smile, laugh, gasp and it also made me really uncomfortable. Sometimes all of those emotions in one page. I loved Gurbas complete, unabashed observations of the world around her. No one was spared from her raw wit, not even herself. This is a book I have thought about every day since I have put it down and I plan to go back to it again and again.

A memoir exploring a Mexican-American lesbian's experiences with sexual assault, crossing over into both true crime and ghost story territory at various times, as she connects her assault with the assaults of others. This book is raw and sometimes hard to read, but it has a strong and consistent voice throughout. She explores memories throughout her life that tie directly and indirectly to her sexual assault in interesting and powerful ways.

There are parts of this book that I read aloud to my eight year old so we could laugh at how kids can be or how school can be or how teachers can be or how white people can be. There are parts that I read to my husband so I could see his eyebrows raise and hear him say damn, as in damn that's good writing or damn that'd be a good piece to study with our students or damn, that's some dark tale-telling right there. And there are parts that I believe only Gurba could probably read aloud, the parts I feel like she read just to me in this unique/smart/wicked/endearing voice. I don't know if I am doing a good job reviewing her work, but I think people should read Mean because it's very, very good.

This is a story about surviving rape that is not about recovery but rather about the quotidian haunting of trauma. Gurba’s prose is cutting and precise, sharp and painful in ways that make you want to slice deeper just to relish the sensation across wounded flesh. Every sentence a thorn-studded bloodied bloom of language. Gurba writes all the tortured and ugly feelings of Mexican girlhood without any of the sappy redemption. “Disobedience made her glow. It was better than makeup.” This novel is stunning, I devoured it in a single day.

not the kind of book we usually pick up, but we chose it for our book club and we are glad we did ... it is an uncomfortable book, a perceptive book, it challenges the reader ... we had a very good discussion after reading this book ...

Bought it as a gift and it was a real hit. It was a Christmas present and she's already read the whole thing.

After reading Gurba's crushing review of American Dirt, I just wanted more of this eloquent, sharp and relentless language, and I was not disappointed. This is a 21st century Bildungsroman, written in a collection of fast chapters that capture the protagonist's coming-of-age caught between love, sex, racism, inequality, violence and all the mess of US American society.