Erika LopezRezensionen

this feels like the basis for things that erika lopez did much better in her later books. still, i am really drawn to her sense of humor and point of view.

WAHOO! Was this such a fun read. Tomato, I need more!

I love this book and have handed it out to many friends after a bad breakup.
Lopez is filthy, funny, and fabulous.
Her protagonist Tomato is all of that an more.

Part art book, part memoir, part manifesto, Erika Lopez' The Girl Must Die is an eye-opening statement. With no interest in redemption or convention, Lopez overturns traditional feminist notions of abuse, sexuality, and morality and puts forth acerbic and in-your-face arguments about race and gender. This isn't a tome full of rants, but a well-crafted intertextual experience that is as hilarious as it is confrontational.½

Erika Lopez presents her readers with a tits-out account of what it's like to grow up sexy and become a Monster Girl in this book. It's a sardonic, gritty, unapologetic social commentary wrapped up in brutal feminism with a side of tenderness. It's hard to describe Lopez's work in any other way. In The Girl Must Die, all of your questions about what it's like to be biracial, bisexual, poor, sexually voracious, and human are contained within these pages. Structurally, the narrative is tight and there is a good balance between illustration, white space, and text. Every single word belongs on each page and this attention to craft and detail makes it next to impossible to set the book aside until you're finished reading.

Hilarious, unapologetic, bawdy, weird, intelligent and a quick read (plus lots of entertaining illustrations).

An entertaining read - definitely a quick one. It attempts to turn the American road novel on it's head - by following two bisexual women as they cross the country on motorcycles, getting into crazy adventures, etc. It's also a "coming-of-age" story - as the narrative grows, so does the protagonist. It's reminiscent of On the Road as the story follows Tomato on her misadventures, with no purpose for hitting the road other than it's there to be hit, and life lessons are learned along the way. But the book breaks the road novel convention with illustrations (at times completely meaningless), and other stylistic leaps.

I remember ordering this book for a library I worked at in 1997. The book had just come out. It caught my attention because: 1. it was written by a Latina (I'm always on the lookout for Latina fiction) and 2. it was so unique physically (full of illustrations and funky fonts and such). But why I recommend this book is that it's hilarious and smart. Interestingly, I met the author's father at a party in Amherst a few years ago. He's a long time resident. Oh - and we read the book in a class I took here at UMass 2 years ago: Spanish 697V Travel & Translation in U.S. Latin@ Literature. Great class!
-Isabel Espinal, Librarian for Afro American Studies, Native American Indian Studies & Information Literacy

Donated by T.McCarthy, March 2013

I couldn't bring myself to donate this book, but, I found it very important to give it to the CSC library community by virtue of its realness, relevancy to sex and culture as told from the brilliant Erika Lopez who has traveled the world. Her raw accounts are aching to be scratched by your nails--gripping the pages. Sexy, hot, and then some.

Don't steal this book. The illustrations and typesetting alone can be dreadfully ripped from the book and plastered with wheat paste on a bathroom wall as a decorative.