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Ordinary Girls: A Memoir

Review

Ordinary Girls: A Memoir

“We were the girls who strolled onto the blacktop on long summer days, dribbling past the boys on the court…. We were the wild girls who loved music and dancing. Girls who were black and brown and poor and queer. Girls who loved each other.” So begins this extraordinary memoir of girlhood and coming of age --- and all the violence, woes and triumphs that come with the territory.

Though ORDINARY GIRLS promises to be anything but ordinary early on, Jaquira Díaz opens with an uplifting and energizing story of her family coming together for the funeral of an activist. Her mother is blonde and beautiful, her father is curly-haired and exuberant, and her life is full of promise. Raised in housing projects in Puerto Rico, Díaz is poor but happy. During the day, her mother works at a factory and her father fills her head with stories. At night, when he takes her to the notorious Plaza to work, Díaz is just one of the boys: running, climbing, and playing games of warfare and survival. From a young age, Díaz is strong-willed and stubborn, but she is also a lover of stories and imagination. However, this youthful sense of potential does not last.

"On par with bestsellers like EDUCATED and THE LIARS’ CLUB, ORDINARY GIRLS is a rare book from an even rarer storyteller, and one that will inspire not only conversation but new depths of empathy in all of its readers."

In vivid bursts of memory, Díaz chronicles her life in Puerto Rico and eventually Miami, explaining how her father’s business of dealing drugs and her mother’s battle with mental illness set her on a dangerous and reckless journey to the present. Though full of love for her and her siblings, they were deeply flawed and do not read as the sort of loving parents we are used to seeing on the page. Through Díaz’s innocent eyes, we watch as her father is drawn to the glamour of wealth and womanizing, and her mother is ripped apart by worsening schizophrenia, eventually becoming addicted to drugs and lowlifes. All the while, Díaz and her siblings are forced to look out for themselves, scrape together cash for food, and learn to become adults from some of the worst role models out there.

But ORDINARY GIRLS is no pity party, nor is it totally inward-facing. As she unpacks her family’s violent, turbulent history, Díaz also explores heavy themes like colonialism, sexual assault and racism. As a young girl, she is faced with wildly conflicting ideas of womanhood: her mother not only walks around in the nude, but tells her girls the importance of masturbation --- and yet, when a much older man exposes himself to a young Díaz, she knows that she will be the one to get in trouble for daring to have eyes in a world full of perverted men. Adding another layer to her exploration of sexuality is her own attraction to women, which is decidedly at odds with her culture and upbringing.

Woven into Díaz’s experience of girlhood is an undercurrent of racism and intolerance, with the standards of beauty in Puerto Rico favoring the light-skinned and straight-haired --- two things she is definitely not. It is her own maternal grandmother who calls her the n-word for the first time (yes, that’s right, “first” and definitely not last). Even when her own daughter is failing to mother her children, Díaz’s grandmother can only see the color of their skin, forcing Diaz to confront discrimination too young and too close to home.

So it is that Díaz turns to the streets for love and attention, finding solace not in her own home but in the backs of vans, motorcycles and porches. Her story is not one you’ve never heard before, but it is told with such raw, vivid emotion that it will definitely stand out. Through principal’s offices, juvenile detention facilities, addiction counseling centers and even the armed forces, Díaz takes on life head first, always setting her own path --- for better or for worse. Those unfamiliar with Puerto Rico’s history will be shocked and horrified by the country’s deeply entrenched fight for independence, but they will be equally uplifted by the spirit of Díaz and her people. She weaves the history of Puerto Rico into her own seamlessly and effortlessly, offering readers a brief but vivid glimpse into her country’s journey for recognition, and the myriad ways it mirrors her own path to love and salvation.

On par with bestsellers like EDUCATED and THE LIARS’ CLUB, ORDINARY GIRLS is a rare book from an even rarer storyteller, and one that will inspire not only conversation but new depths of empathy in all of its readers.

Reviewed by Rebecca Munro on November 8, 2019

Ordinary Girls: A Memoir
by Jaquira Díaz

  • Publication Date: June 16, 2020
  • Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Algonquin Books
  • ISBN-10: 1643750828
  • ISBN-13: 9781643750828