Myriam Gurba

In this artfully crafted collection of new short stories by award-winning author Myriam Gurba, nothing is as it seems on the surface. A Mexican grandmother tells creepy yet fascinating ghost stories to her granddaughters as a way to make them sit still ("How Some Abuelitas Keep Their Chicana Granddaughters Still So That They Can Paint Their Portraits in Winter"). A Polish grandfather spends the night in a Mexican graveyard after a Día de Muertos celebration to discover if ghosts really do consume the food that has been left for them ("Even This Title Is a Ghost"). Unforgettable characters inhabit these cross-border tales filled with introspection and longing, as modern sensibilities weave and wind through traditional folktales creating a new kind of magical realism that offers insights into where we come from and where we may be going. A native Californian, Myriam Gurba earned a BA with honors from UC–Berkeley. Her writing has been published by Manic D Press, Future Tense, City Lights, and Seal Press. Her first book, Dahlia Season , won the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. She blogs often for the Rumpus and Radar Productions.

Myriam Gurba's debut is the bold and hilarious tale of her coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Mean turns what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, funny, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously. We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating. Being mean isn't for everybody. Being mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form. These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. They're queers. Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. She's the author of Dahlia Season (2007, Manic D) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Wish You Were Me (2011, Future Tense Books), and Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015, Manic D). She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders.

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks and slithers into place, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it. Now, Myriam Gurba delves into the sociology of “creep,” taking a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions and the people that plague today’s America, analyzing the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. Blending cultural criticism with her powerful, deeply personal experiences, Gurba examines the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly perpetuate suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. Yet identifying individual creeps, social groups, and cultures is only the beginning; the bulk of the book examines how we as individuals, communities, and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us. With her brilliant mind, brazen style, and wry humor, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion, Mexican sterotypes to her former abuser. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she passionately argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression and offers tools that can help liberate us all.

«Somos malas para defendernos del aburrimiento y de aquellos que quieren cortarnos los pechos. Somos malas para defender nuestros clubes e instituciones. Somos malas porque nos gusta reírnos. Ser mala onda con niños es divertido, además de ser un deber del feminismo de la segunda ola. Ser grosera con hombres que se lo merecen es una misión sagrada. La sororidad es poderosa, pero ser una perra es más apasionante. Ser una perra es espectacular». El debut de Myriam Gurba es el relato audaz y fragmentario de su entrada a la vida adulta como mujer chicana queer en California. Con un humor agudo y descarado, la autora desgrana en estas páginas el proceso de asumirse lesbiana y las brutales secuelas del racismo, las agresiones sexuales, la misoginia y la homofobia. Y todo esto lo hace —y quizá eso sea lo más interesante de su planteamiento— reivindicando la maldad como forma de resistencia política Mala onda, un texto autobiográfico que transita géneros y desafía el binarismo sexual y lingüístico, consagra a Myriam Gurba como una de las voces contemporáneas más poderosas de la escritura chicana.