I became aware of Myriam Gurba on Twitter when she tweeted about her review of a forthcoming bestseller, American Dirt, being killed because it was too mean. My first thought, being intimately familiar with the liberties white women take with other people’s stuff, was that she was, at a minimum, as mean as she needed to be. (I am a white woman, born and raised in Texas, so when I say I am intimately familiar, I mean it is my heritage.) There is an essay that lays out the problem with American Dirt, “Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck.” It’s a fantastic essay on its own, but as the penultimate essay in a collection it becomes a tile in the mosaic. Jeanine Cummins is on the hook for her choices, but her transgressions are a part of a cultural pattern of violence larger than one book, one industry, or one country.
Creep: Accusations and Confessions is an amazing collection of essays with violence at the core. Violence is central, but this is no parade of miseries. Gurba’s incisive writing soars and skips from scene to scene, from the personal to the historic, arranging them in your mind until the pieces become a picture. In her first essay, “Tell,” she pulls together children playing, a four year old boy who becomes the president of Mexico, William S. Burroughs’ wife, and a murder in Central Park until you see how games are used as a cover for violence and abuse. I realize that I am hitting you over the head with her central theme, but she does not.
Creep is such a good book. It is thought provoking. It is its own syllabus. Please buy it or request it from your library. If you have liked Tressie McMillan Cottom or Mikki Kendall, you will like Myriam Gurba.
CW: violence, threats of violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, gun violence, political violence, racism, misogyny, homophobia, incarceration, drugs and alcohol use.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Avid Reader Press and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
