I am torn on this book. It's well-written and it captures a Zeitgeist and culture -- but it's only my cultural home at some glancing blows, and it's got that gritty flavor that turns me off.

I was surprised by the extent to which Valencia can be read as a satire. I think my favorite example of this is a side comment about how the main character needed to self-soothe and so headed to the local co-op for something really delicious, which she decides would be fake meat. There are just so many levels on which that works as parody of the lesbian community, but it -- and its fellow comments every few pages -- are meant entirely in earnest as the author's lived experience.

At the same time, the commentary that borders on satire is also trenchant. It captures queer culture tucked into little asides that have more than a grain of truth. Pride, for instance, really is culturally a festival for finding a new lover.

For that reason, it's clear why this book won a Lambda Literary Award. Valencia speaks truth even in the midst of (because it is in the midst of?) the grittiness of serious drug use, major depression, fisting and knifeplay, and cockroaches scurrying across mattresses. Although the story didn't speak to me of perfect freedom so much as poverty, self-delusion, and self-destructiveness, even for super-square me, it captured the soul of the bar scene and play party community, of the small knots of people whose shared and unquestioned political beliefs and sexual practices form the core of the wider culture, which the rest of us visit in fits and starts. ( )

a realistic view of the queer community of san francisco seen through the lens of michelle tea, who has a wonderful and beautiful way with words.

Drugs, sex, and a broken heart! ( )

http://thebumpideereader.blogspot.com/2009/11/valencia-by-michelle-tea.html ( )

I read this before and hated it--probably in 2002. I read it again for book club and this time noticed how well it is written. I still have trouble relating to the narrator. Even at my most self-destructive I was never self-destructive like this...she seems to have so little awareness of herself. But I think her honesty is amazing and the level of detail with which she captures her whole scene. I'm curious to read some of her later books to see how she evolves. ( )