Up Your Ass or From the Cradle to the Boat or The Big Suck or Up from the Slime, & A Young Girl's Primer on How to Attain to the Leisure Class

by Valerie Solanas

"This play was lost in 1967, banished to the nether regions of Andy Warhol's New York studio, the Factory. It was found again quite some years later under some lighting equipment in a silver trunk belonging to Billy Name. The Andy Warhol Museum has (or had) it on display. Several people now own copies...

"Excerpt from the dedication:
'I dedicate this play to Me;
a continuous source of strength and guidance, and without whose unflinching loyalty, devotion and faith, this play could never have been written.
Additional acknowledgements: Myself-
For proofreading, editorial comment, helpful hints, criticism and suggestions and an exquisite job of typing.
I -
for Independent research into men, married women and other degenerates...'

"The main character is Bongi Perez. She is a hustler and a panhandler. She is also a lesbian. Bongi Perez says: 'I'm so female, I'm subversive.'

She loiters around the street, making money, cruising broads ('lowdown, funky broads'), and generally spouting witticisms and pontificating on the pitfalls of an American male dominated society. She encounters various characters as she goes about her day. One such character is Ginger who catches Bongi's eye as she's searching around the sidewalk for a misplaced turd she needs for a dinner party that she's hosting for two male friends later. Bongi asks Ginger if she's going to serve her guests the turd. Ginger replies, 'You're impossible! I assure you I have no intention, whatsoever, of serving my guests a turd. The turd's for me. Everybody knows that men have much more respect for women who are good at lapping up shit.' Another character is Mrs. Arthur Hazlitt, a housewife who ends up strangling her child with his super glue erection(I shudder to think). These are only two in what seems to be a whole plethora of personalities who have exchanges of one sort or another with Bongi."
(Taken from http://everything2.com/title/Up%2520Y...)

In 2000, 35 years after being written, the drama premiered on stage in San Francisco, CA. (taken from http://search.sfweekly.com/2000-01-19...)

Genres: Plays, Feminism, Queer, Fiction, Theatre, Drama, LGBT

61 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist writer best known for shooting the artist Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, an essay on patriarchal culture advocating the creation of an all-female society.

Reviews

[Pauline]

C’est drôle et caustique, la préface de Wendy Delorme apporte un éclairage vraiment bienvenu au texte (et à Solanas en général) et ça se lit en 30 min au soleil. J’approuve sainement.

[Živilė Zablackaitė · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is incredible how relevant it is today.

[Kay ☾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

BONGI: Very fucky world we live in. My only consolation’s that I’m me – vivacious, dynamic, single and a queer.

In this world men treat women like they are practically brain dead. They also sexually assault them while giving them back handed compliments. The dialogue captures Solanas' disgust with men.

RUSSELL: A son to carry my name down through the ages – Fizzlebaum! I’d give anything to be able to give birth, the crowning achievement, what every woman’s aching for.

BONGI: I’m not.

I swear all of Bongi's responses were on point! Solanas paints men as blind idiots who crave women in every way possible while also treating them like garbage. This was hilarious. Everything was spot on.

ARTHUR: Oh, I don’t know. If he didn’t have one, he might grow up and be a faggot or something.

BONGI: That’d be just as well; let the guys ram each other in the ass and leave the women alone.

[Gal Tapley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up.

There’s an incredible scene in this around dinner with two pretentious assholes and a sex worker that is so insanely modern it’s eerie. It’s perfect satire of trad liberalism that has somehow looped back around in recent years.

The rest is Solanas’s narcissistic ramblings with herself: a confident, gender-less being and the role-aware others. Despite it feeling like Solanas vs an exaggerated “other,” I get what she’s going for, and respect it immensely as feminist text. I mean, wouldn’t you shoot Andy Warhol over this? ...Maybe not, but she starts the script impassioned.

You can feel the anger in this, and while her mental break was soon to follow it’s self-publication, Solanas is right many times in this pile of trash. We can agree it's worth something under there.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The people that get it, get it and the people that don’t, don‘t - basta.

[Mohammed Shahil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would love to see Valerie solanas translated to Malayalam for the sheer pleasure of watching the Victorian moralists , who dominates the Malayalam literary world, getting offended .

[Lia Lowenthal · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like, not good, but we love Valerie anyway

[Dany · Rating 3 out of 5]

mixed feelings about this one, akin to Kathy Acker. weird, queer, unapologetic, repulsive, political, satirical. it was a lot for such a short play. maybe a bit too punk for me.

[Jaq]

Sotto acidi¿

[Eva Gustafsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

j’ai toujours du mal à donner mon avis sur le féminisme, mais alors quand c’est écrit dans les années 60 et que c’est toujours d’actualité je suis impressionnée
j’adore à quel point c’est choquant pour la période (ou l’imaginaire que j’en ai)

[Speedyfat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Intéressant mais honnêtement trop meta pour moi. À relire en anglais parce que je pense que la tradal ne lui rend pas justice.
1/5

[Karina Stomberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what living in bushwick feels like

[Freya Wilkinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

um ... I had to read this for uni ... and I hated it. The content is shocking, so shocking that at times it was funny, but this play is unbelievable, in a bad way.

[Sofie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoooosh.
Bright, witty and immensely relevant.

[Ivan Loginov · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's fun to see SCUM Manifesto as a play mocking sexism, liberal feminism, etc. The only pity that TERFism and overall essentialism spoil such witty and irreverent satire.

[Sloddervos · Rating 5 out of 5]

WIE wil hier met mij een adaptatie van opvoeren voor de parade 2026 (oid)?

Valerie Solonas is zo lesbisch en boos dat het enkel kan leiden tot hardop grinniken.

Bongi: So you’re serving them a turd.
Girl: You’re impossible. I assure you I have no intention, whatever, of serving my guests a turd. The turd’s for me. Everybody knows that men have much more respect for women who’re good at lapping up shit. Say, would you like to join for dinner?

[Hayley]

hilarious. a young girls’ primer is a banger of a short story

[andreea. · Rating 4 out of 5]

RUSSELL: You don’t know what a female is, you desexed monstrosity.
BONGI: Quite the contrary, I’m so female I’m subversive.

[Clara Martin]

Completely unserious and also very very serious.

[Keziah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doing anything but working

[Holly Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply relentless

[Sarah Skoric · Rating 5 out of 5]

(y)

[l’ivresse rhapsodie. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellente pièce de théâtre ! Drôle, satirique ! Cependant !!! TW : violence sur mineur à la fin de l’ouvrage donc âme sensible s’abstenir.

Ça reste radicale et franchement accessible

[Alexa]

Will not be rating this one for obvious reasons

[Aleksandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember the last time a book made me laugh so much, shook me up, and unsettled me at the same time.

[Mathilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amalgamated Asswatchers of America

[Lorie Hm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un piece de théâtre misandre et hilarante. Je n’ai jamais lu de textes plus ironique et sarcastique que ceux de Solanas. Si seulement autre chose (avec le Scum Manifesto) avait survécu !
Je conseille, pour celleux qui veulent découvrir la misandrie et la « folie » de Solanas, de commencer par la lecture du Scum.
C’est personnellement dans ce sens que je les ai lus, et la pièce s’en retrouve d’autant plus claire et drôle quand on sait ce qu’il y a dans la tête de l’autrice.
Le sarcasme s’allie parfaitement à l’absurde dans cette pièce qui m’a fait mourir de rire tout le long.

[Evie F.C.N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently saw someone say that misandry is wrong because it’s gender biological essentialism. And that quickly made me deviate from the ideology. Cause u could use the same argument for classism and racism when the problem isn’t the people it’s the systematic oppression.

But even with the idea that men are all bad, we shouldn’t stoop to their level and imagine a world where we abuse them back. Victims shouldn’t become the oppressors, we should imagine a world where we’re all free.

Anyways this was even more all over the place than SCUM. I was chilling with it till the boy with glue. yuck.

[Éléa]

Lire Solanas, c’est toujours un mix de sentiments surprenants. On rie de son ironie et de sa répartie, on réfléchit de ses propositions extrêmes, et aussi et surtout comme l’écrit Wendy Delorme en préface, on « grince des dents ». On grince des dents parce que c’est écrit en 1960 et que dans certains extraits, rien ne va. Mais on grince aussi des dents parce qu’elle écrit des réalités féroces.
Lire Solanas pour moi c’est essentiel, même si ça met une énorme claque dans les dents.