Skip to main content
27. Valencia by Michelle Tea

I am perhaps not the kind of girl that one would expect to be reading a Lambda Award winner for Best Lesbian Fiction. Not because I have anything against lesbians, but I am generally averse to stream-of-consciousness, whiney memoirs, and overkill sex scenes. At risk of gushing, I will say I found Valencia beautiful in language and spirit. Even though it fit all the aspects of a book I would most expect to find contemptible.

The opening seemed to prove my hypothesis, that it would be pretentious and vulgar. Tea describes how "little tsunamis of beer" cascade down her T-shirt one night, as she tries to impress a girl she is crushing on. Typical fucked-up girl memoir, trying to use pretty language to seem meaningful, I thought. Backtracking to why I was reading it in the first place...I saw it in the library and remembered an old friend had raved and raved about it. Figured it was different from my usual stuff and gave it a shot.

You can look at Valencia the way I wanted to when I started reading. There isn't much more to it than San Francisco, dyke life, and drugs. But whether I was in the right mood or what, it seemed insightful and true to me as I read.

Tea describes her drunken, stoned, and sober adventures and her experiences with the girls she chases after. She has long-term and short-term relationships with women over the course of the novel, as well as tumultuous relationships with friends and acquaintances. Tea is an assertive, sometime aggressive, character who pursues life vigorously and impulsively. Through her words, you can get in the head of the loudmouth at the party, who is also the clingy girlfriend, also your angry, volatile, emotional, but lovable best friend.

Perhaps that's what sets her memoir apart. I'm a quiet girl, in awe of girls like her. I feel like many writers are. When she combines her view with her talent for wordsmithing, the result is entrancing. Tea uses the best points of stream of consciousness, a flowing rhythm that expresses thought and feeling, without the frustrating constructions of Joyce, or annoying lack of punctuation or organization like Eggers.

Valencia is for those who can take hard-core lesbian sex scenes and drug abuse scenes, both of which are fairly consistent throughout the book. It's maybe one for aspiring writers too, and maybe later for historians or LGBT theorists and whatnot. I'd recommend it to friends, both male and female too.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Books with Single-Word Titles

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Books with Single-Word Titles These are all my favorite books that I could think of with one-word titles. A lot of fantasy, a few nonfiction (minus subtitles) and Kindred , whether you consider it scifi or historical fiction. Also two portmanteaus using the word "bitter." I suppose it's a word that lends itself to amelioration. 1. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler 2. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore 3. Fire by Kristin Cashore 4. Heartless by Marissa Meyer 5. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini 6. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 7. Stoned by Aja Raden (has a subtitle) 8. Educated by Tara Westover 9. Fledgling by Octavia Butler 10. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Speaking of cultures and society, I leave for Spain on January 9. Instead of continuing as a book blog with a specific goal for number of books to read in a year, Space Station Mir will become a chronicle for my adventures in Spain. Expect a post for each new place that I visit, with pictures! I also plan to continue reviewing books, however I will not make a set goal for number of books to read this year. I do pledge myself to read at least one book in Spanish that was not assigned for a class. In terms of my goals for 2009, I was not diligent enough in keeping track of them. Looking back, I've fulfilled some of them and not others. The greatest trend in my reading this year, which marks a huge deviation for me, is that I've read more non-fiction than I think I've read any other year in my life. I've finally developed the ability to sustain interest in non-fiction other than biographies. For a while, biographies were the only non-fiction I ever read, with the exception

Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish

 I feel like I've been DNFing a fair amount lately, mostly with review books. I feel obligated to read review books longer than I would if they were books I just picked up on my own. That said, I have a caveat in my Book Review Policy  that if I feel I am not the right audience for the book, I won't post a review. I try to avoid that by only picking books I genuinely think I will enjoy, but of course I can't always predict that before I read. Also, while book clubs have been a great way to get exposed to books I wouldn't normally read, tastes will differ and every once in a while, I find a book I'm just not willing to finish. I also want to say no shade to the authors or anyone who enjoyed these books--they just weren't for me. Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish 1. Caribbean Competitors by Poppy Minnix--LibraryThing review--This one sounded great and has a beautiful cover, but while the island setting was compelling, I just couldn't ge