Myriam Gurba > Quotes

“We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would chop off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being rude to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being a bitch is more exhilarating. Being a bitch is spectacular.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Guilt is a ghost. Guilt interrupts narratives. It does so impolitely. Ghosts have no etiquette. What do they need it for? There is no Emily Post for ghosts.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“You never predict that rapists are lurking in the sun, sky, and trees. In other words, humans are as they seem. Seeming is real. After a stranger ambushes you and assails your private parts, everything becomes new. Everything is reborn. Everything takes on a new hue, the color of rape. You look at the world through rape-tinted glasses.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Did you know PTSD is the only mental illness you can give someone? A person gave it to me. A man actually drove me crazy. He transmitted this condition. Like the man who gave my gay cousin HIV, or like my grandfather, who gave my grandmother the clap. You can “get” schizophrenia or bipolar in the genetic sense. You might inherit genes that predispose you toward hearing voices or intense fluctuation of mood. In that sense, these conditions are “given” to you. But they aren’t given to you in the same way watching your father cut off your mother’s head on Christmas gives you PTSD.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“When was the last time you were mean for fun? When was the last time you were mean in the name of politics? Have you ever been mean for Jesus? When was the last time you tried to kill someone rather than let him into your club? When was the last time you wanted to kill someone but chose to be a bitch instead of a murderer? Have you been called a bitch?”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“A possessive part of me wants to hoard this story. I want to chipmunk or squirrel away the memory of this event, place it in a tree trunk with the memories of all the other rapes, attempted rapes, and gropes, memories that will never be released or consumed. When a man asks, "What did he do to you?" he's asking to eat one of these traumatic acorns. Girls never ask for these seeds. They know what it's like to be degraded and fucked by this world, to be made a big-time bottom by life. They don't need the details of my particular shame to construct empathy.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“It’s not fair that I’ve had so much privilege. And by privilege I mean life.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Every pretty woman who lives a long life gets to perform an art project called “watch my beauty disintegrate.” It’s not revolutionary. It just happens.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Art is one way to work out touch gone wrong.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“This guilt was an invisible but heavy albatross hanging around my neck. (That’s a reference to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) I wear that bird like Björk wore her swan dress. I wave from a red carpet leading to hell.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Tyrants revel in the chasm separating the literate from the illiterate. Hoarding literacy gives them the power to define, defraud, and shatter.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“I’d slipped on a black blouse, black skirt, and black shoes. My hair color did not require alteration. Neither did the color of my soul.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Why does public school furniture have to hurt?”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“To get rid of him, I pretended to read. Boys hate that shit.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Gabriella let go of the knife and I held it in the same place for a minute or so, slowly dragging it up and down my thigh, doing it with a really light touch, not really doing any damage. I pulled it up my leg again but on its way down I put pressure on shaft, broke the skin with it, the blade traveling horizontally down the length of my leg for her, to show her how ready I was for her, so she could see some part of me that was on the inside.”
― Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season: Stories and a Novella

“Montessori school ruined me for normal school and life in general. It made me only want to do things I care about or am curious about.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Though employers often refuse to consider applicants with criminal records, such workers have been found to be more productive and have less turnover. They’re also promoted faster.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“When William noticed a small blue hole in Joan’s head, he screamed, “No!” He jumped into her lap and chanted, “Joan! Joan! Joan!” Maybe he wanted to be consoled by her. The living expect a lot from dead women.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“I hoped Steve would injure himself and die so that I wouldn’t have to let him into my club. That had been my strategy. To give his sex an insurmountable initiation. Like the literacy tests given to black folks in the American South before the Voting Rights Act passed.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“The worst cookies might do was choke you, but family could do the same.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“reporter asked William Burroughs, “Do you regret the period in your life when you were addicted?” He answered, “The point is a writer can profit by experiences which would not be advantageous or profitable to others. Because he’s a writer, he can write about it.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“Cliché and romanticism form the backbone of modern memory.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“Her wails grew birdlike and took flight.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“We nodded to show Ashley that we believed deaf Miss America had cunt breath. That’s what you do when you’re in high school and someone is your friend. You agree that other girls are cunts to prove your fealty to the girls you love.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“She enjoys music through me. She enjoys food through me. She enjoys sunsets through me. She enjoys the smell of certain flowers through me. It's OK for ghosts to exist through me. It has to be.”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“California doesn’t deserve its reputation as a progressive state. If it were so damn progressive, it wouldn’t rely on jails and prisons to take care of its problems. In Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, the geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore asks why California embarked on the biggest prison-building project in the history of the world. In her view, “prisons are partial geographical solutions to political economic crises.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“Rae gets me pure and simple, my frustrations with the loop tape that is my thought process, the boiling pot that is my body. She feels my frustrations because she got a mix-up, too; she's not really a girl. Like, she's got a pussy covered with thick hair and she's got a full rack, but she's really a guy trapped in a gold mine of a stripper's body. As a he-she, Rae knows what it's like to feel bananas. Just like I'm chaotic neurotransmitters imprisoned by flesh and bone, she's masculinity poured into a body that curves like a Coke bottle.”
― Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season: Stories and a Novella

“Of course an elderly white dude taught anthropology. Who better to explain all the cultures and peoples of the world than he who is in charge of them?”
― Myriam Gurba, Mean

“But the truth is, until your homies gaze into your soul and see who you really are, your name doesn't mean anything. Your family, they want to change the real you, prevent the real you from ever happening, and so the name they give you, it's an empty one. They'd rather not recognize the potential for evil as well as good that grows inside you, that from within your soul grins the smile of a sinner and criminal. But your clicka, they're not scared to see this 'cause when they look at you, they see themselves grinning right back. Your homies don't mourn the loss of innocence like your family does, your old lady remembering how proud she was the day of your first communion, tu primera comunión, as you got down on your hands and knees in front of a priest and took the host on your tongue for the first time. They know that, in the barrio, innocence is a lie and that the biggest lie of all is that you were ever really innocent at all. In the eyes of the world, you were born a sinner, a criminal, a whore, or a gang-banger. And with pride, your clicka gives birth to you and helps you fulfill this prophecy.”
― Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season: Stories and a Novella

“My godmother was showing me how much work death really is. Death doesn’t end with a gunshot. The bullet is a starting point, and there are many administrative steps that the living must complete before the deceased can heave a sigh of relief. The dead depend on us. Without us, they don’t sleep well.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions