Creep

April 1, 2023

Queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer Gurba follows up her acclaimed memoir Mean with another work called memoir (and sure to draw on the personal) but perhaps better seen as fierce and engaging cultural criticism. Here she assesses the meanness, the ugliness, the sheer creepiness that creeps through our social structures, showing how abuse of any kind is ultimately a community act and how to counter it. Prepub Alert.

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June 15, 2023
A queer Latine author explores the multifaceted concept of a "creep." Gurba, the author of the acclaimed memoir Mean, begins her latest book with a memory of her and her friend Renee Jr.--daughter of Renee Sr., who gave the author her "second perm"--flinging "lesbian" Barbie dolls out of a 10th-story window purely to delight in the toys' untimely deaths. "It's easy to get sucked into playing morbid games," writes Gurba, using this wickedly hilarious scene to frame a larger question: Who is called a creep, and why? In this and the following essays, the author compares her harmless childhood fascination with the macabre to legitimate creeps. These include writer William Burroughs, a "queer nihilist" and "outlaw" who got away with killing his wife; former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who shot and killed the family maid when he was just 4 years old; and Gurba's own abusers, including a rapist named Tommy Jesse Martinez and an ex-boyfriend she calls Q, who "routinely raped, beat, and tortured me not because I'm stupid, not because I'm a masochist, and not because I'm insane. He did it because I'm a woman." One of the most touching pieces traces how Gurba's cousin's search for basic safety ultimately landed her in jail, an outcome the author clearly connects to the racist war on drugs. Gurba's lyrical prose forces us to face the sexism, racism, homophobia, and other systems of oppression that allow some Americans to get away with murder while the rest of us live in constant fear. Every piece is rife with well-timed humor and surprising conclusions, many of which come from the author's staggering command of history. Profoundly insightful, thoroughly researched, incredibly inventive, and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is a masterpiece of wit and vulnerability. A truly exceptional essay collection about safety, fear, and power.

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July 31, 2023
These powerful essays by Gurba (Mean) reflect on violence against women and discrimination against people of color. The title essay probes the “mundane horror” of abusive relationships, with Gurba sharing how she became romantically involved with a violent man after her marriage fell apart when she was in her late 30s, and how writing her memoir, Mean, gave her the solace and perspective needed to leave him: “Love and hate were, at last, my choices to make.” In “The White Onion,” Gurba dissects her relationship as a Chicana Californian with the work of Joan Didion, suggesting that though she “mentored me in irony, detachment, and condescension,” Didion romanticizes her pioneer ancestors throughout her oeuvre and “says little about the hardships they inflicted” on the region’s Indigenous people. Elsewhere, Gurba teases out similarities between practical jokes and rape, contending both take victims by surprise while humiliating and dominating them (“To survive gender-based violence, sexual violence in particular, one of the things I’ve had to do is strategically not take it seriously”), and tells how the censures her cousin Desiree received from loved ones after speaking up about being sexually abused by her distant kin led Desiree to start using meth and develop an addiction that eventually landed her in jail. Full of lean prose and biting commentary, this is as emotionally heavy as it is hard to put down.

August 1, 2023
How is rape like a practical joke? In this wide-ranging collection of memories, Gurba, the queer daughter of Mexican parents in California, vividly dissects the insidious toll of sexual violence and racism through firsthand experience. She outlines how she uses dark humor to both distance herself from and approach her own suffering from rape and the disturbing ways her romantic partners controlled, stalked, and abused her. Her cousin found better lessons in survival and support by joining a gang than with her own family, which did not protect her from incest. Gurba shares her essay that went viral, excoriating American Dirt, a novel about a Mexican bookseller fleeing cartel violence, and she dives into the complexities within the backstories of headline makers like serial killer Richard Ramirez and William Burroughs, who claimed he shot his wife in a William Tell-style setup. Gurba unsparingly challenges us to confront the many ways those who prey on others are obscured and even protected by our society, her intense attention stemming from a deep desire to stop such horrible acts.

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