Nov 14

Nov 14 Ordinary Girls

Author: Jaquira Díaz
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Ordinary Girls is a fierce, beautiful, and unflinching memoir from a wildly talented debut author. While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes: as her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was surrounded by the love of her friends; as she longed for a family and home, she found instead a life upended by violence. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz triumphantly maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.

With a story reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz delivers a memoir that reads as electrically as a novel

TL;DR Review

Ordinary Girls is an incredible memoir. Jaquira Díaz holds no punches, holds your stare while she turns her life story into an anthem for girls like her.

For you if: You like memoirs at all.

Full Review

“We were girls, but we’d spend the rest of our days together if we could. Until one day we realized that without meaning to, we grew up, grew apart, broke each other’s hearts.”

I’ve had my eye on Ordinary Girls ever since it was published in 2019 to high praise. It wasn’t until I got a copy in my hand-curated Page 1 Books subscription that I finally had the nudge I needed to pick it up. And y’all, those folks over at Page 1 are so good at their jobs — I loved it.

Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico and lived there for a few years until violence pushed her family to Miami Beach. There, she grew up in housing projects with a defeated father and violent brother on one side, and a schizophrenic mother and beloved sister on the other. Violence, poverty, drugs — none of it was strange to her. And throughout all of it were her girls — her friends.

This is the kind of memoir that makes the world bigger, richer, and more human. The kind written by regular people with regular and exceptional, harsh and beautiful, small and big lives. The kind that open a lot of eyes to the experiences that a lot of people live with.

And as anyone who’s read this book will tell you, it’s also just so, so well written. Certain passages stopped my breath. Díaz showed a promise for writing early on, and eventually her desire to be a writer is what helped her claw her way out of one life and into another. But this isn’t a story about someone who worked hard and overcame all odds; it’s about an ordinary girl who had a mix of good timing and luck and just enough stubbornness in her heart to keep pushing forward.

Strong recommend.