Jaquira DíazBesprekingen

I greatly appreciate what the main character goes throughout her life. Puerto Rico is vividly painted and so our the lives of the lovers in this story. The use of drugs, running wild in the streets and not knowing which way to turn. Life offers so much and so little at the same time. You will be stricken by the truth in this tale. I think that this is a must read. You will find yourself loss in this story.

Se Ordinary Girls fosse un romanzo, probabilmente adesso starei iniziando questa recensione lamentandomi di come alla protagonista ne siano accadute troppe per rendere la narrazione credibile; invece Ordinary Girls è un memoir e inizio la recensione lamentandomi del fatto che non è stato tradotto in italiano e che abbiamo bisogno di più storie di questo tipo, per due motivi.

Il primo riguarda il modo in cui Díaz racconta la sua storia: questo genere di memoir spesso ha un andamento ascendente – dalle stalle alle stelle – prendendo avvio da un contesto di povertà e disagio per arrivare al successo coronato magari dalla pubblicazione del libro stesso. Ordinary Girls, invece, ha un andamento ondulatorio: non c’è il successo definitivo che salva per sempre Díaz, ma è un continuo oscillare tra lo stare bene e lo stare male, tra eventi positivi ed eventi terribili. Il che la rende una storia con la quale è facile empatizzare (quale vita può vantare il successo definitivo che ne sistema ogni aspetto?), per quanto possa essere lontana dalla nostra specifica esperienza di vita.

E abbiamo davvero bisogno di empatizzare con le vite delle persone come Díaz, il che ci porta al secondo motivo per cui abbiamo bisogno di queste storie. Se la vita di Díaz avesse smesso di oscillare e fosse deragliata verso lo stare male in maniera irreparabile, oggi non starei scrivendo questa recensione. Non solo perché Ordinary Girls non esisterebbe, ma perché le vite delle persone povere, che vivono in contesti di estremo degrado, che magari finiscono loro malgrado nella criminalità organizzata, che vengono distrutte dalle dipendenze e da malattie mentali mai diagnosticate o mal curate – tutte queste persone ci causano al massimo una scrollata di spalle.

Quella gente lì è ovvio che finisca male. Quante volte l’abbiamo detto, pensato, sentito? Come se ci fosse chi non vede l’ora di vivere una vita di merda. Quanto sappiamo essere arrogantз: ben vengano le storie che ci fanno vergognare della nostra insensibilità.

Ordinary Girls: A Memoir (2019) by Jaquira Díaz is a story for the seemingly powerless. I haven’t read nonfiction in a while, and this book brought me to become interested in the genre with how immersive the story is. Díaz recounts her life experiences, but her use of imagery and description transport you to right there next to her as the event plays out. This read was inspiring, with a message of taking the circumstances fate had brought you and striving for a better life. Reading this memoir was certainly entertaining, but emotional taxing as Díaz covers darker parts like sexual harassment when she was younger.
I would recommend for those who felt like they were handed the wrong cards since birth, "for the black and brown girls...For the wild girls and the party girls, the loudmouths and troublemakers. For the girls who are angry and lost. For the girls who never saw themselves in books. For the girls who love other girls, sometimes in secret," (Díaz 304) as Díaz represents and reaches out to all of these with comfort.
My one area of criticism would be related to the fact that there are many characters presented in Díaz's story; many of whom are mentioned only a couple of times. It is quite difficult to keep track of all these figures over the course of the memoir.

Diaz' story of her difficult life growing up in Puerto Rico and Florida with a mentally ill mother and an irresponsible father is passionate and engrossing. She painted a vivid picture of her life as a young girl and teen constantly getting into trouble, showing us what's really under the "bad girl" label.

Where this book fell short for me was that it's missing the big step that took her from troubled young adult to a successful writer. The book also mentions that she finally understood she was queer but for the entire book she is married to a man and although it mentions glimmerings of attraction to women, there's never a moment when she comes out or falls in love with a woman.

It felt like a big gap in the book, like a decisive moment and we never got to learn what happened. Was it just that she grew up?

Still a worthwhile read and a look at a very different life from my own.

Digital audiobook narrated by Almarie Guerra

In this memoir, Díaz relates her childhood and teen years with brutal honesty. She grows up in a dysfunctional family, first in Puerto Rico and later in Miami. Her mother battles both mental illness and drug addiction. Her father is frequently absent. She gets support and love from her friends, but lacks direction. She relishes her Puerto Rican cultural heritage, but her bisexuality does not fit the cultural model. A few teachers see the spark of her intelligence and nurture it, but she has a long, hard road to traverse (mostly alone) before she achieves some success.

I found her writing gripping and enthralling, despite the many cringe-worthy scenarios. Diaz does not flinch when reporting her own misdeeds, or a sexual assault, or her time in juvenile detention. There were times when I wanted to turn away, because the scenes were so painful, but her writing kept me going. My heart went out to the young girl and struggling teenager. I applauded the woman she became and the ways she found to reconcile with her parents.

Almarie Guerra does a superb job of narrating the audiobook. I had to double check that it was not narrated by the author, herself, because Guerra’s delivery sounds so very personal.

Whew, Ms. Diaz has LIVED. She has lived through so much. So much. She is fierce. She has so many stories to fill these pages and those stories are worth hearing.

Here is a book of what appears as transparent raw honesty told by a woman who was born in Puerto Rico. She moved with her parents to Florida as a young girl. Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, by Jaquira Diaz, was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2019.

This work provides substantial insight into the realities of life in a less than desirable Puerto Rican neighborhood. It's a slice of life in a mixed-race household that consisted of of mother of Puerto Rican ethnicity, a black father and their three children, including Jaquira and her two siblings.

Jaquira's father is described as having been a drug dealer. The author says he made money by selling perico, the Spanish word for cocaine. Jaquira's mother made unflattering accusations about what the father's night life was like when he philandered away from home. Despite whatever the undesirable circumstances of home life may have been, this girl seems to have been happy with her Puerto Rican childhood.

The father ditched the illegal activity he had practiced in Puerto Rico and moved the family to Miami. Things were far from perfect there. In Florida, the mother exhibited violent behavior and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. She made heavy use of drugs. Jaquira suffered beatings at the hands of her mother.

There is a high degree of sadness in this book which weaves stories of a girl who was born into poverty. She struggled with drugs, participated in Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and was a juvenile delinquent. Jaquira was troubled with questions about her sexuality. With the help of military, she transitioned away from negatives in her life. Near the end of her interesting tale, we see a self-confidence in this person who I trust should be able to treat us with more forthcoming good literature.

Way to go Jaquira!

A well written and surprising memoir. It amazes me that Díaz lived to tell her story. She had a rough life and came through it beautifully.

I received an ARC of Ordinary Girls from Algonquins Books' LibraryThing Giveaway. Thank you.
Jaquira (Jaqui) Diaz is an extraordinary woman. She was born in Puerto Rico, in a bi-racial family. Her mother's mother seemed to hate that she looked black, and had no maternal qualities at all, and was an addict. Her Father's mother was the only positive adult influence in her life offering her calm love. Her mother was self absorbed and later suffered from Schizophrenia and drug addiction, her father seemed preoccupied and dissatisfied with his life. Her brother hated her and beat her up all the time, she loved her little sister. They moved to Miami and the parents broke up. Her brother got to stay with her father, while she and her sister lived with their mother. With no supervision, no guidance, and a lot of anger, she ran away a lot, rebelled against discipline, did drugs, drank, hung out on the streets, attended school when she felt like it. She is confused, hurt and really doesn't have many places to go. She has her friends and that's what gets her through much of her pain and childhood. After several misstarts, she joins the Navy and while she faces struggles there, it is there she also gets some balance. The book skips all over the place which makes it very hard to follow sometimes. It's as if she's telling one story and a memory is triggered and launches another. Still one can't help but admire her grit.

There are some lives that, if you hear their story, you wonder how they could have survived. The story is tragic, filled with violence and anger, a life that is tarnished and broken in so many ways. Poverty, racism, sexism, depression, addiction: Jaquira's early life was filled with all of these, yet somehow, she managed to not only survive, but thrive and find her way out, moving toward the girl she always wanted to be.

Jaquira Díaz tells her story of her upbringing in the poor parts of Puerto Rico and Miami, while being raised by a schizophrenic mother, abusive brother and a whole load of other issues. I really wanted to love this one but I couldn’t seem to connect at all, and at times I found her style of writing to be difficult to read.½

This is a memoir by journalist Jaquira Diáz about her childhood in Puerto Rico, through her school years in Miami and into her adulthood as she negotiates her way as the daughter of estranged parents, bouncing back and forth between her absent father and her mentally ill and drug addicted mother. Despite her bleak situation, this is very much not a misery memoir. Diáz is not interested in garnering sympathy and she leans hard into how members of her family supported her when they could and especially on the friendships she formed as a girl growing up in a tough Miami neighborhood where gunshots were heard regularly and where she is haunted by the body of a young boy who remains nameless for far too long.

Diáz is first and foremost a journalist. Her focus is on understanding other people. She weaves into her own story, that of Lazaro Cardona and his mother Ana. He is found dead under a hedge in Diáz's neighborhood when she is a child. It took time for his identity to be found, and his mother and her girlfriend are convicted of his murder. This murder is also a story Diáz revisits as a journalist, attending his mother's appeals.

What I found most interesting is how Diáz manages to move from being a school drop-out who was regularly arrested at a shockingly young age, to building a stable life for herself, and how she chooses to love her family, even her mother.

Ordinary Girls is a memoir that illustrates what defines ordinary in a poor community where dysfunctional families are the norm and drug use runs rampant; where the only hope of escaping this life is through an early death or education. With minimal, if any, family support education is not an obtainable goal for many. The author, Ms. Díaz, is one if the fortunate ones. She made it out. How she gets there is not the subject of her story. Living and growing up under these extreme, yet all to common, circumstances defines her book.

Ms. Díaz has a deeply compelling story to share. Unfortunately, it suffers from a lack of editing. The last half of the book is redundant and the structure weak. Despite this problem, the first half of her memoir confrms that she is a talented writer. Revision would have greatly improved the overall quality of her book.

After finishing this book, I felt that my emotions had been put through a shredder. Some people live such sad lives. From Puerto Rico, her parents fighting all the way, Jaquira, her two siblings try to make a new life in Miami. Everything, however, goes wrong. Her parents split, her mother turns to drugs and men, and then is diagnosed with schizophrenia. As you can imagine, things quickly go from bad to worse, with two young girls left with the responsibility for their own survival.

This is by no way a happy little story. It is hard to read about what happens to Jaquira, physically and emotionally. It took courage to write this book, to lay bare all she does within. Her honestly, her very survival is inspiring. Young girls who mess up again and again, lucky to be alive. Young girls who are not ever allowed to be cherished daughters. The young black and Latino girls that are already stereotyped, looked on with preconceived eyes. Thought to be a type instead of a person.

Her story jumps around, and sometimes it was disconcerting, other times a welcome relief. She talks about other women in the news, women who have done or are accused of terrible things. She doesn't let up in her telling, she's unbearably truthful and it is emotionally draining, but this young woman can write, and she had much to say.

ARC from Librarything.

This was not a boring read, Jaquira has a way of writing that makes you want to keep reading. She told her life story from the time she was a girl in Puerto Rico up until the present day, weaving in historical and political events that shaped who she is today.

There were a few things I would have liked to see from this memoir but didn’t.

I would have liked to see a little more about how she changed her life for the better and got out of her circumstances. So much of this book felt like she was looking back to her drug-addicted days, and while she did note the negatives in detail, it almost seemed like she was nostalgic for those days. While part of her story includes growing up with a mother who was diagnosed schizophrenic, it focused more on drug addiction than the illness itself. The story also jumps around quite a bit, moving forward and backward in time to various events that shaped her. While the flow is mainly chronological, there are other events interspersed that took place at a different point in her life.

I feel like much of this is because she had so much to say. Her memoir could have been a series; this felt like such a brief overview of her life, and I wanted to see more of it. There were what seemed like pivotal points in her life that were glossed over so she could try to fill in as much as possible. I am not sure if a memoir series is a thing, but giving greater detail to her life could fill more than one book.

I was also excited to get to meet her at the Texas Book Festival last weekend! If you enjoy memoirs that read like fiction and coming of age stories you may like this one.

TW: mental illness, drug addiction, domestic abuse, rape, violence

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I struggled to read this book. It was tough to read than I thought it would be because there were a lot of parts that, in my opinion, could have been left out. Storytelling within the chapter was a little bit rough and it could have had a better transition. The story is non-linear, which is fine, but for me, it was really hard to care for the character as much. There are good parts that made me laugh and smile because I could imagine how her adventures and experiences happen as they were told. Overall, I still consider it as a good read.

I didn't think this was very good. Diaz' story is super compelling - growing up in Puerto Rico and immigrating to Miami as a child, a dangerously mentally ill mother, a violent brother. and struggles with her own depression. I think she'd have been better served by writing about the same material in a long-form essay and not a book. The book is very repetitive and after a while, everything begins to run together. something about the order of the telling also flattened out the inherent drama of the material - when she runs into her mother - homeless and sick - on the beach three-quarters of the way through, I was like - eh, ok, I've already heard about this, instead of feeling the shock that I should have had felt the narrative been constructed in a different way.

I feel like Diaz was under-served by her editor.

Also, I didn't understand how someone who identifies as queer never writes about her sexual relationships with women, except very peripherally.

Thanks to Library Thing for the Early Reviewers copy.

I received an ARC of this book, so it's possible my biggest complaint has been corrected in the final copy. The complaint? The repeated use of Spanish phrases without translation. Ex: chancaletas means sandals. This is just not a word a non-Spanish speaker knows. The use of "Spanglish" became very annoying. A few footnotes translating the Spanish words in the text would have helped. I hope this problem is corrected in the final copy. If it isn't, I don't think the book will be successful in reaching English speakers who don't understand any Spanish.

Additionally, there were a few word usage mistakes in English. (I don't blame the author for these; they should have been caught by an editor. Again, maybe in the final they were.)

At times, the organizational structure was difficult to follow. In the beginning of the book it was mostly chronological, which worked well. However, towards the end the "theme" chapters included events which occurred in time periods which were described earlier in the book; this was less successful and at times I found this part of the book difficult to follow.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It let me learn about the author's life and she comes from a background very different than my own. ( I found the author's description of her life in the navy especially interesting.) I admired her strength and determination to succeed despite an extremely dysfunctional childhood.½

A fascinating but triggering memoir, Ordinary Girls carries the reader through a lifetime full of trauma, adventure, and even history. With a fascination for people featured on the news and knowing their stories beyond the snippets given, Díaz shows us more lives than just her own, though hers is full already.

I would recommend this book to those who love to live through the story of another, those lovers of memoirs and those who are not easily triggered. Ordinary Girls immerses you in mental illness, abuse, homelessness, and so much more.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This memoir about Jacquira Diaz's rough childhood in Puerto Rico and Miami is at times difficult to read, both because of the content and because it skips around frequently in time, however it is definitely worth reading. In the end it is a testament to friendship and the girls who get us through the tough years. It is very well written and impactful. I received an ARC of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

I requested this because of the comparisons to Roxane Gay's nonfiction. I don't think it's quite on that level but it is a memoir that packs a real punch.

Brutally frank memoir of a difficult childhood filled with all the struggles: mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, drugs, suicide attempts, abuse, divorce, anger, poverty. It was difficult to keep up at times as the author skips around in chronology, and the sheer number of hardships she recounts is overwhelming. But this is a new, fresh voice, bringing a perspective that is not often heard in literature, and worth a read.

I requested a review copy of this book because it was compared to Roxane Gay's memoirs, which I liked very much.

Growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida in a poor family that struggles through divorce, mental health issues, abuse, and addiction crisis, Diaz did not have an easy childhood. This is a memoir full of strife, abuse, drugs, and poor decisions.

I found the time-jumping writing style difficult to read. I had to set the book aside several times for a break. But ultimately I think it's a good book, from a point of view I'd not heard before.

Thank you Librarything and Algonquin Books for the review copy.

“Ordinary Girls” by Jaquira Diaz was an education for me; a window into a foreign world within my own country. Ms. Diaz takes you inside the Puerto Rican community in Miami and sometimes brutally shows you what her life was like. While I knew in my head that there were girls growing up dealing with so much upheaval, abuse, deprivation, societal harshness and ignorance I did not know it in my heart. Now I feel that I do because of this memoir by Jaquira Diaz. Now these young girls have names and faces.
Thank goodness Ms. Diaz writes with humor and joy even though she suffers from unbelievable sadness and suppressed anger. Thank goodness she returns to her beginnings to find her “Ordinary Girls”, her friends from her childhood who time and again lift each other up and over the tremendous hurdles before them. Thank goodness I stuck with the story even as it made me so sad because, in the end, she celebrate her girls, her writing and her life. Jaquira Diaz, please keep writing because so many people in our country need to really see you and hear you, especially all of those “Ordinary Girls” who don’t often get to read about themselves. Looking forward to the next one! (I received an advance reader copy of the book via LibraryThing - thank you!)

This was an interesting memoir, but I found myself not liking this book as much as I wanted to. The story of Jaquira Díaz as she was growing up, hardships that she endured, was interesting, but I wanted to know exactly what it was that changed her situation. Something seemed lacking.