"Cristy C. Road is a bad ass. She has a list of published work that leaves me awed and inspired."—Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day
"Road's writing has long brought to vivid life the experiences of a queer-identified Latina punk rocker."—Bitch magazine
At its core, Spit and Passion is about the transformative moment when music crashes into a stifling adolescent bedroom and saves you. Suddenly, you belong. At twelve years old, Cristy C. Road is struggling to balance tradition in a Cuban Catholic family with her newfound queer identity, and begins a chronic obsession with the punk band Green Day. In this stunning graphic biography, Road renders the clash between her rich inner world of fantasy and the numbing suburban conformity she is surrounded by. She finds solace in the closet—where she lets her deep excitement about punk rock foment, and finds in that angst and euphoria a path to self-acceptance.
Cristy C. Road is a twenty-nine-year-old Cuban American artist and writer from Miami; she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has reached cult status for work that captures the beauty of the imperfect. Her career began with Greenzine, a punk rock zine, which she made for ten years. She has since published Indestructible, an illustrated novel about high school; Distance Makes the Heart Grow Sick, a postcard book; and Bad Habits, a love story about self-destruction and healing. She has also illustrated countless record album covers, book covers, political organization propaganda, and magazine articles.
Cristy C. Road is a Cuban-American artist, writer and musician who’s been supplying creativity for punk rock, publishing, & social justice movements since she was a teenager in Miami, circa1997. Road self-published Green’zine for ten years, and has since released three illustrated novels which tackle gender, sexuality, mental health and cultural identity; truthfully spoken with curse words and bathroom humor: “Indestructible” (2005, Microcosm), “Bad Habits” (2008, Soft Skull), “Spit and Passion” (2013, Feminist pRESS), and her most recent project, The Next World Tarot (2017 Self Published, 2019 Silver Sprocket), a traditionally illustrated Tarot deck depicting resilience and revolution. C.Road’s illustrations has been featured in New York Magazine, The Advocate, The New York Times, Maximumrocknroll, Razorcake, Bitch Magazine, Bust Magazine, and countless other publications; as well as on shirts, record album covers, concert and political advocacy posters worldwide.
As a musician, Road is a songwriter and guitarist. She fronted the pop-punk group The Homewreckers for eight years, and currently fronts her new project, Choked Up.
Road has been touring nationally and internationally on her own, with her punk rock bands, and with Sister Spit: The Next Generation since 2001. Cultivating a performance trajectory with a consistent show of defiance, she performs at bookstores, record stores, basements, bars, college campuses, and beyond.
She is a Gemini and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
If anything, Cristy Road is super prolific, to the point of being ubiquitous. Over the years, I’ve been both super annoyed by her work and genuinely impressed. I’ve gone from being bored shitless by her “went here/did this” stories of punk travel in her zine Green Zine, to totally immersed in writing she’s done on race and class. I’ve been completely irritated by trite drawings she’s done of open-mouthed punks in dumpsters shocking suited yuppies, to enamored by surrealistic and saintly portraits she’s done of people who could be her friends. Or, just as easily, someone any of us could know, elevating the mundane to the sublime. And, frankly, I’d just as soon have it this way. I’d rather have someone keep things interesting, even if it means being a bit spotty at times, than a reliable one-trick pony.
The thing with Road is that she’s been in punk for a long time and, as a result, her distinct, black and white illustration style is as recognizable as Cometbus’s handwriting to anyone who’s been involved in DIY punk for the last decade. And as time passes, I see less of the wide-eyed posi-fetishism that I found frustrating and a more distinct take on her punk rock world, with thick lines of realism slipping into the visceral hearts and blood that symbolize the radiant and near-divine passion of her and her community.
Spit and Passion is a thick graphic novel about Cristy’s attempt to come to terms with her queerness at thirteen. It’s not so much a story of her coming out, but more her staying in the closet. Her identification with Green Day, and how the band empowered her, gave her some of her only clues to another life being out there. She describes the conflict she had with being proud of her Cuban heritage but feeling like an outsider when faced by the homophobia of her family and friends.
A cold way to put it would be to say that it’s simply a great piece of music journalism, documenting how something as simple as an ex-punk band could be so influential to a young girl, leaving breadcrumbs to a better life where she could be out as queer and wouldn’t be stuck in her youthful closet. But that would throw this memoir in with all those bougie hacks who write all those horrible books about how Morrissey taught them to be proud of being a wusscentric, self-centered jerkoff or how they lost their virginity to (or in spite of) Black Sabbath. Road isn’t using Green Day as a pop culture shoe-in to a book deal—it’s deeper than that. It brings you into the claustrophobic closet and desperate longing of a pubescent lesbian girl trying to find something of herself in anything and finding not much anywhere. The closest she gets is Green Day, who she clings to like a talisman.
The most impressive thing about Spit and Passion is Cristy’s ability to so clearly recall her youth; the strength she’s had not to block out the hardship she dealt with. Maybe I’m projecting here, but as someone who remembers little of his pre-teen years—choosing to forget fundamental Christianity, family, money problems, and strife, and all the hell I went through in middle school—one has to respect the sheer force of memory that Road must have to be able to describe this story in such detail.
It will, hopefully, fall into the hands of kids as confused and alienated as she once was. It’s not the tired old story young punks are always regaled with about creating a scene and a community out of nothing, nor is it about a punk’s first show where she realizes there are other outcasts and misfits just like her. Instead, it’s a far braver story, one that takes place earlier,when a closet is a place of refuge for a confused young girl until the day she won’t have to be surrounded by fag jokes at school or religious uptightness at home. And the only clue she has of this is in the integrity of one rather mundane ex-punk band who weren’t afraid to stand up for queers or what they believed in. Through them she found faith that there was a better, more open-minded community that one day she might find, and one I think she ultimately did. In turn, she leaves some clearer and more direct markers behind for others to find their way, as well as a damn good memoir. –Craven Rock
I'm mostly familiar with Cristy C Road through her artwork, and I was happy to find that her writing is just as hard-hitting as her illustrations. She writes here about growing up queer in a Cuban Catholic household and finding solace in the music of Green Day.
She seems a lot more self-aware than I was as an adolescent, but some of it still felt very familiar. I don't really know anything about Green Day, but I do know what it's like to feel like a musician gets you when no one else does. Thank god for music, right?
i love that this book is one of the first times i have seen miami illustrated, and a specific miami that is very close to my childhood experiences. i loved that she said my teachers ms garcia and ms navarro bc i had a different ms garcia and ms navarro which is a testament to miami latina teachers!! anyways i loved how familiar and foreign this felt at the same time. i really liked delving into art that saves you and makes you feel real valid and deserving of happiness especially when ur a cuban 13yr old tortillera
Cristy always thought of herself as a bit of a tomboy, and as she entered middle school, one thing became obvious: she was undeniably, irreversibly gay. Lacking in self-esteem and unsure how to fit in, Cristy turned to a newly discovered band, Green Day, which changed her life and gave her hope that somewhere someone would accept her for who she was.
Do I like this book? I like some of it. I also found some of it weird and distasteful. That's part of its charm, of course, but does it go too far? It makes some very good points, and at the end of the day is a really authentic view of the world through the eyes of a young teenager.
I've always known Cristy Road to be a multidimensional artist, playing in bands, writing and publishing zines, and producing amazing artwork. I even commissioned her to do the cover of a one-issue zine I did years ago. However, other than knowing she's a bit of an icon in the queer punk community, and must be a big Green Day fan based on her nom de plume, I didn't really know anything about her. This short-but-striking memoir of her life at ages 11-13 chronicles not only her home and school life, but her raging inner turmoil as she tries to work out her identity.
It's a classic story of a kid from a loving, but somewhat repressive cultural context -- she grew up in a Cuban-American family in Florida with traditional Catholic attitudes toward homosexuality. School life is no better, as the misery of middle school in the early 1990s (cruel girls, idiotic boys, hormones everywhere) is further complicated by her inner sense of being different. Like so many alienated kids, Road finds consolation and connection in music -- in her case, the pop-punk of a Green Day tape loaned to her by another outsider at school.
As someone who both also found connection through punk (in my case The Clash), and bought Green Day's debut EP, 1,000 Hours, when I was still in high school in 1989, I can completely understand the depth of her passion for her new discovery. So, even though I'm a middle-aged straight white guy and didn't face her agonies about sexual identity and otherness, her memoir still strikes a chord. And of course, her trademark illustrations and text is amazing as always. She's got such a bold, confident and distinctive style -- here sometimes deployed in ways that are more imaginative and grotesque than usual. Highly recommended for teens and tweens everywhere who don't feel like they belong.
I really dug the art and raw honesty of this queer coming of age memoir. The ending was a little abrupt, but I guess how do you really decide when to end your coming of age memoir?
I'm not super sure who the best audience for this is? Like, I think that probably queer teens would relate to the coming out narrative, BUT a lot of this is also very ingrained with coming of age in the early 90s--no internet, no way to experience the punk subculture except by seeing Green Day on MTV and then eventually learning that by being on MTV, other punk groups considered Green Day to be sellouts. So in that sense it might be better appreciated by 20 & 30-somethings.
The main thing is that the language and art are explicit--definitely don't hand it to a tween. I think I will keep it shelved in teen, though--ultimately it is a high school story.
Spit and Passion is a blunt, grotesque, and in-your-face exploration of adolescence. This graphic novel is an autobiographical look at Road’s middle school years (mostly 6th and 7th grade) in which she discovers masturbation, questions her sexuality, and begins to form her own punk-queer identity with few role models. Torn between her emerging sexuality and her conservative Catholic Cuban-American culture, Cristy becomes obsessed with the band Green Day. She has a particular obsessive fondness for openly bisexual lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong
The art was beautiful, the sheer honesty of a queer coming-of-age story was intense, but there were sometimes where I legitimately had to force myself to keep reading. I’m not sure what it was exactly, but sometimes it really felt almost too intense to jump into. I felt like I had a very similar experience growing up with my identity, and yet, it felt difficult for me to immerse myself into it. Still highly recommend.
Although a former avid comic book reader, I have trouble with graphic novels. This seemed a long repeatitious lament of the struggles of a middle school girl who knows she is gay and really wants to come out.
really enjoyed this. beautiful artwork. thought this was such an intimate, thoughtful, and accurate recounting of exploring and coming into one's queerness as a person of color. cristy road's graphic novel about being a cuban-american queer person growing up in miami really reminded me of my friend, who i will recommend this book to, which warmed my heart. i loved seeing how they navigated adolescence and the importance music and alternativeness was to them. reading this, i saw a lot of myself in it with a lot of similar parallels circumstance-wise but also with cristy's relationship to music. adolescence is the time that music really was at the forefront of my life, seeing me in a way that i didn't feel seen or heard at that time, essentially being my saving grace. i wasn't as immersed in the music culture itself because i liked indie music and that scene has always felt so very white to me, but the music was still important. all this to say, great read, will probably buy a copy of my own.
This is a graphic biography. Don't think that because it is graphic that it is easy to read. Racing through it because of the pictures will cause you to miss the story. Cristy is looking back to when she was 12 and just coming to realize she liked girls more than she liked boys. Growing up is hard enough, but when you are so out of step with your Cuban Catholic family, it's even harder. She felt lost and alienated from her classmates, also. Then she discovered the band Green Day. Their music helped her start to integrate her feelings and her desires. I read the book slowly. Parts of it spoke to me, reminding me of how confusing growing up was. I have also come to appreciate the music of Green day, although I was much older when I first heard them. I liked it.
I read this all in one night. It's been a while since I found a relatable queer DFAB main character. Reminded me of my own teen angst and pains as a queer punk baby back in the day. We see Cristy's journey as a cuban american queer listening to green day, crushing on bald girls, figuring shit out. Essential read for any queer latinx who has ever felt alone or like they had to negotiate their queerness over latinidad. Also just love Road's artwork and font throughout the text, decorated with a Cristy Road style take on the images found on Green Day's Dookie album.
I'm not sure if this would be as endearing to a reader who was not a Latin middle schooler who was obsessed with Green Day (for the music and their queer politics) at just the moment. But I think it would be. The illustrations are incredible, capturing the deliberate AND undeliberate griminess of adolescence, the randomness of getting great teachers and then losing them, and what loving a band was like before the internet.
read for gss373 this did not at all take advantage of the graphic form and felt more like an illustrated personal essay than a graphic memoir. and also, if you're going to have so many words on a page, don't make them all caps, and at least make it well-written. the art style was so uncanny valley and the writing was all tell and no show. i didn't dislike it enough to give it 1 star but i really don't have much good to say about it so
Not my tea. I think a lot of it is b/c I really just don't care about Green Day which, in the most base sense, is a my own personal problem.
EDIT: Also still thinking about how this is so trans-coded but then the book is somehow not particularity interested in being trans? Which is not good or bad -- gender is so much more complicated than categories of cis or trans -- but it's so interesting that the book is really really about sexuality and that's foregrounded, and the trans stuff is v much there, but not like, foregrounded.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I somehow didnt enjoy this one at all. Nothing really happens, especially not in the drawings, and the story is told in a confusing form: quite complicated theoretical retrospective analysis of gender, ethinicity and sexuality, but told through the voice of a super angsty 13yo? And Green Day references on every page.
Not really my kind of book. I understand the trauma of developing a queer identity as an adolescent, but I didn't enjoy reading a book that didn't talk about anything else.
Zeer persoonlijke strip, mooi getoond hoe belangrijk muziek kan zijn, zeker voor zoekende queer tieners in de jaren ‘90, maar miste een verhaallijn en kwam er zeer moeilijk doorheen.
To say that “Spit and Passion” is unlike any graphic narrative I’ve ever read would be a gross understatement. Cristy C. Road might very well have invented a unique genre with this book: the genderqueer Latina Bildungsroman (facilitated via punk pop—namely, Green Day) graphic narrative.
And it’s very good. And very frank. Her language is rather salty, and her images are sometimes quite…well, graphic. Road does not hold back one iota as she traces the myriad sources of anxiety that bedeviled her middle school years. From her Latina heritage and the simultaneous love/condemnation she received from the adult women in her family to the unrequited crushes on female teachers to the excruciatingly cruel torment that is middle school (even for kids who are NOT genderqueer and/or bisexual) and the sweet temptation of a real-life girl crush, Road endures a gauntlet of emotional angst that rings true. Add to that her contemplative nature and her tireless quest to figure out why she’s feeling what she’s feeling and why she feels so bad about feeling what she’s feeling—and the result is a very powerful story of queer youth.
All of its merits notwithstanding, I would certainly hesitate to teach this book to adolescents. Although it would be appropriate for mature adolescent readers, it would definitely be problematic as a class read. Just as some adult novels might be appropriate for young adult readers, “Spit and Passion” is a young adult graphic narrative that is appropriate for more adult readers. I hope that the teens who need to read this tale will seek it out and find it—but I doubt they will do so in an academic setting.
My friend Vanessa lent me her copy of this book and told me I had to read it. It's been sitting around on my bookshelf for months - I finally picked it up because the semester is ending and I needed to give the book back to my friend. I wasn't entirely sure I would like the book before I picked it up (I'm generally /drawn/ to things that are more aesthetically pleasing) but I ended up really, really liking it. I had never been a rebellious, punk, queer teenager (I was introverted and struggling to pin down my sense of self, and not overly attracted to anyone at all). Nevertheless, reading Spit and Passion, I FELT everything that Cristy C. Road struggled with. I felt that adolescent alienation and longing for a future when you can just be yourself, and I felt the extremes that we can take our first passions to. I was really taken in by this graphic novel, and I'm really glad my friend told me to read this.
Road explains how Green Day saved her life as a closeted queer Latin@ teen. I have been a fan of Road's artwork for quite a while, so I was naturally drawn to the illustrations (no pun intended). The story itself isn't unique per se, but it's definitely a voice that needs to be heard. There are not enough punky queer stories about there. I also found Road's defense of Green Day, along with her interpretation of how queer and radical they were, quite amusing as a rabid fan of Green Day in my adolescence. I think the general theme of the story is easy to relate to and would be a good read for teens and adults alike.
This graphic memoir is so doggedly honest in word and image that it completely took me back (kicking and screaming) to the weird, liminal frame of mind that I occupied between the ages of 11 and 13. I found it so intense I could only read it a few pages at a time. So worth it, though.
It's a memoir, but it's also one of the best things I've read about music in a long time. She's so unrestrainedly goofy, specific and insightful in exhuming this story about discovery and survival that it made me want to go back and listen to Dookie or even American Idiot.