Ordinary Girls: A Memoir

by Jaquira Diaz

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Book cover for Ordinary Girls

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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.
  • ISBN13 9781616209131
  • Publish Date 1 November 2019 (first published 29 October 2019)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Out of Print 13 March 2021
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Algonquin Books