This memoir is so engrossing, it reads like a novel. The author's childhood is haunting and I honestly had to put the book down at certain moments because it was just too heavy and I needed to take a step back for my own mental health. But that just speaks to how powerful the writing is. I would have liked a little more information, particularly about her moves later in life, but this is a memoir, not a biography, and we are privileged to have this book out in the world. Four and a half stars, rounded up to five. Trigger warnings for sexual violence, armed and unarmed physical violence, drug use, suicide (a lot of all of these things).

Ordinary Girls is a pretty raw memoir but I thought it was really worth reading. Jaquira Diaz was born in Puerto Rico to a Latino father and a white mother. Her mother and maternal grandmother were both schizophrenic and addicts. Her father has his own issues. Her paternal grandmother was a lifeline. From a very early age, Diaz lived an edgy messy life, first in Puerto Rico and then in Miami. Her memoir is not linear. She narrates experiences, feelings and observations, more or less in chronological order. By the end, she explains that she called her memoir Ordinary Girls as a tribute to her younger self and all other girls and women who have lived messy reckless lives -- they are all worthy humans and no one should be left behind. I liked the way she moved her memoir in that direction. I liked the writing and the rawness. It doesn't make for an easy read but it's well worth it. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz
This is a great read about a timely topic. Diaz's coming of age memoir about growing up in Puerto Rico while dealing with a schizophrenic mother pulls at your heartstrings while being all too real. She lays it all out on the line and doesn't sugar coat anything, but it does give hope to anyone who may be struggling with who they are.

As I read this, I both didn't want to put it down and wanted to stop reading - this memoir is raw and distressing and beautifully written. It was hard to keep track of time and place at points, but that felt intentional, as Jaquira's life was so scattered itself. The amount of obstacles Jaquira faces from such a young age - domestic violence, sexual assault, addiction, mental illness - are heartbreaking to read about, but her ability to bare her soul on the page and show how she pushed through were inspiring to read. I especially appreciated her focus on the friendships that got her through really tough times.

This was a surprising book. A memoir of growing up in Peurto Rico and Miami Beach, in an extremely dysfunctional family. Díaz’s mother and maternal grandmother both have mental illness and drug addiction. Her father seems more concerned with chasing other women, or something. It is her father’s mother that saves Díaz, her abuela. The book is lyrical and written well, in many ways amazing.

How do you survive poverty? How do you survive drug addicted mother, parents that split up? How do you survive a childhood where the mother is the child’s worst danger? Where babies are found dead, brutalized and starved, left in bushes by an uncaring mother and her lesbian lover. How do you claim your sexuality when you’re attacked by a child even?

Díaz is a strong writer. The book is not linear, and perhaps if it was it would be overwhelming. It was for her to live her life, and at the end we, as well as Díaz are amazed she did survive. Not only survive, but thrive.

An amazing book, not an easy read, but recommended.

While Ordinary Girls wasn't one of my most anticipated 2019 reads, I'm so glad I found it on NetGalley. This book. Whew. Jaquira Diaz's writing is unbelievable, and I gobbled up every page in no time. I've never read something quite like this - an ode to friendship, to anger, to resilience, to dancing, to living, to loving, to ordinary girls living their extraordinary lives. Moving from Puerto Rico to Miami at a young age, Diaz must deal with her mother's schizophrenia diagnosis and drug abuse, the violence she suffers from at home and inflicts on others at school, and the sexual abuse she deals with during multiple incidents - all as a child and teenager. This is a tough read - but Diaz is able to show us the poetry, the music, the beauty in her life as well, choosing to focus on it just as much as the darkness. Diaz is able to show us her world, a world we hardly ever - if ever- see written down on the page - one of queer, brown girls whose friendships keep them alive when family can't. My only qualm was the fractured ending - the inclusion of Puerto Rican history in the last chapter was welcome, but it was hard to follow since it hadn't been mentioned before. I cannot wait to read more of Diaz's work - I feel confident that she'll be one of the top upcoming writers of the 2020s.

Memoirs are not usually something I pick up to read, but after hearing about this book over the summer, I knew it was a book I wanted to read. Diaz has a powerful voice and gives an uncompromising look at her life. She does not hold back as she narrates her childhood growing up in Puerto Rico, until her family moved to Miami Beach, her time as a juvenile delinquent, a drug addict and a Navy recruit. She did not have an easy life -her father was apathetic about his children and family, and her mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. What I appreciated most about her voice was the lack of judgment. To accept her parents, and herself for who they are, not what people believe they should be was such a strong and beautiful story. While my life was nothing like Diaz's growing up, she brings the reader into her experiences and I began to live Jaquira's life along side her. This memoir is not told in a linear fashion, so there were a few areas that I was confused, as she goes into the future while talking about the past. This is not an easy read, but I feel a necessary one.

I gave this one 30% and could not connect. Memoirs are my favorite genre and while this one was interesting, I found a disconnect between the narrator and the plot. Maybe if it had been written with a linear time line and more descriptions of her surroundings...

This memoir is definitely a perspective that I think contributes to the breadth of voices in literature and I'm happy to have seen it published. Unfortunately, it ended up falling flat for me. The entire narrative stayed at one level and the story dragged.

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2019 and it didn't let me down, this memoir read like fiction. Jaquira grew up with a father that didn't want her around and a schizophrenic mom that treated her mental illness with illegal drugs. The amount of self hated Jaquira had growing up was heartbreaking. The quote "you never know what someone is going through, be kind” was basically written about her. She walked around mad at the world because she was just looking for love and compassion which she never got from her parents. It was a wonderful coming of age book about finding yourself and growing up in a rough world. ⁣⁣

Jaquira Diaz writes from her heart and what we get is an absolute beautiful narrative that keeps you turning the page. The best kind of nonfiction reads like a work of fiction, and Ordinary Girls is just that.

There are some stories when you hear them you wonder 'how did you survive.' Their story is filled with the unimaginable and harrowing and also filled with tragedy, Ordinary Girls is just that, and its title is so far from the truth, not ordinary at all. I loved this book. It gripped me and kept me questioning. One of the quotes that truly stood out was

“We were not the girls they wanted us to be. What kind of girl, they loved to say. What kind of girl, even as they took what we gave, took what we tried to hold on to. Our voices. Our bodies. We were trying to live, but the world was doing its best to kill us.”

A wonderful read that is full of depth.

This is a hard book to review. In part because it's so different from what I generally read (I almost exclusively read fiction and most often mystery/suspense/thriller), and in part because it's just so painful. It's remarkable the levels of pain humans are capable of inflicting upon one another. And especially people who are supposed to, and claim to, love you! It's truly heartbreaking. Diaz is a talented writer, her style accessible, engaging and straight-forward. And though her childhood experience was vastly different from mine, I connected with her story and empathized with a girl who was struggling to find connection and, at times, found it more appealing to simply end the struggle. And while there were connecting threads throughout - the "ordinary girls" theme, the Lollipops Baby - I mostly got the sense that rather than setting out to write a book, Diaz wrote a lot of essays and collated them as a book. Which is a fine approach, but it felt a little too trying to have it both ways; it needed more cohesion to read as a book, or more distinction to read as a collection of essays. Instead it read sort of in the in between as neither. It's a tough read for sure, not what I would call enjoyable, but there's value in Diaz's story and in her voice in telling it.

This memoir is a study of grit, determination and survival. It is hard to wrap my head around the abuse, neglect and poverty that Jaquira Diaz endured. A compelling read and one that will stay with me for a while.
I received an ARC of this memoir from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oddly enough, as the title implies, these are ordinary girls, and as we learn at the end, some girls moved on to successful careers, while others died young, Diaz goes out of her way to detail her wild adventures of growing up with her friends, her unfortunate experiences with her schizophrenic, drug addicted mother, and the less ordinary father who recites poetry and is very socially aware of his surroundings, even if he is a less than perfect father, which, is all ordinary to some degree, yet I felt we missed a lot of our author's life after she had her last cigarette and joined the Navy, setting her on a new path. Doing drugs and wild car rides tends to fall into a similar pattern and becomes a bit repetitious. This is a memoir that will resonate loudly for many, and the author is hoping it will not only ring true, but will land in the hands of girls who are in the same position she once was, and that they will become survivors, fighters, and break free. I think this book will serve to motivate others, will help others feel less alone, and realize there are others like them, and they will live to be older than eighteen, and they will succeed. I'm looking forward to her next book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Algonquin for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jaquira Diaz has had quite the life. It’s not easy to read about all of the crazy things she has endured in her life- such as a mother and grandmother with mental illness, friends dying, drugs, violence, etc. I found it very unsettling and felt sorrow for the author.

The jumping around chronologically made this an even tougher read for me. I wish it would have followed a more linear path. It didn’t quite flow for me and I found myself skimming over the random info she threw in on crimes or some historical figures (I didn’t quite get the connection to the story).

Overall an insightful story, and from a perspective that we don’t hear from much at all (Puerto Rican). I wanted to like this more but the jumping around made it a tough read.

I always find it difficult to review memoirs because it feels as though you are judging someone's life. In this case, Jacqui has been judged enough, mostly by herself. This is a raw coming of age memoir set in Puerto Rico and Miami. Nothing in her early life would make anyone think that Diaz would be where she is today. There's alcoholism, mental illness, abuse, self loathing, and terrible neighborhoods. There's realizing you are gay and learning to live your truth when others hate it. Some chapters feel more polished than others and Diaz tells more about the warts of her life than the positives. I wouldn't compare this to Educated as it stands on it's own and comes at life from an entirely different perspective. This does not emphasize education as the way out of darkness but it does shine a light on how a woman made her way into the world. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A good read; I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.

I’ve read a ton of memoirs in my life, but only three left a lasting impression on me and Ordinary Girls: A Memoir by Jaquira Díaz is one of them. I — I, (wooo!) I don’t even know how to — hmmm, wow! Okay let me try this again.

This memoir is phenomenal! From her violent childhood in Puerto Rico to the beautiful beaches of Miami, Diaz, recounts her experiences with depression, juv., her dysfunctional family, her mother’s schizophrenia, sexually assault and so much more, omg so much more.

As I was reading all I wanted to do is hug her, I wanted to protect her from that life, I wanted to give young Jaquira a safe place where she is loved for who she is. The way Diaz poured her emotions out in this book ☹ And through all that chaos, she survived, she found her voice and defied the odds.

My only issue with the book was the linear fashion it was written. The beginning was boom, boom, boom, then towards the middle she would start to tell about an experience then it jumped to a different time then jumps back. Besides that, I thought this was a strong debut.

4.5/5 for me.


To Algonquin & Netgalley , thank you, thank you, thank you for gifting me this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ordinary Girls was difficult read for me. Memoirs are not my genre of choice typically. This book, while very well written had a gritty feel that at times felt too real. I did not "enjoy" the book, however it did move me. I do not feel this is a good fit for my high school students, but I'm glad I read the book.

Jaquira Díaz is a debut author with an incredible story. She grew up in the housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, and had what would euphemistically be called a “rough life.” Díaz is unflinchingly honest in her experiences with depression, her mother’s descent into drug use accompanied by the onset of schizophrenia, sexual assault, violence, racism, and the legacy of colonialism in Puerto Rico, including its current status with the United States. She does not spare herself from judgement anymore than she holds back on her evaluation of the systems and social structures that shaped her life. The work culminates in her experiences of deciding to try to move forward, the obstacles she faces in doing so, and into the early stages of writing what became this book.

The story is captivating, at times horrifying, and always evocative. But the story isn’t why I devoured this book, it was the way that the story was told. The use of language and writing style is beautiful, I don’t think that I can do it justice in this review. The fluidity of the writing mirrors the fluid treatment of time, and feels like the tides pushing and pulling you through the work. Long, rolling sentences race backward and forward through Díaz’s life, creating an almost cyclical feeling.

I strongly recommend this book for Jacqueline Woodson fans, both in terms of writing style and content. People looking for a non-fiction partner for books like Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give or On the Come Up will find similar thematic elements, though it is aimed at a more mature audience. As wonderful as I thought it was, I don’t recommend it for individuals who strictly prefer plot-driven works, or linear timelines in their memoirs. Similarly, some of the content may be very upsetting for some readers, so take the content descriptions and warnings seriously.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this work from the Publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

We know going in that Jaquira Diaz survives her very turbulent childhood and teen years. That doesn’t lessen the gut-punch as she relates some of the day-to-day experiences in Puerto Rico and later Miami Beach with her mentally ill, substance-abusing white mother, her often emotionally detached black father, and her later relationships. However, this is not an “I escaped terrible circumstances” story. The strength of this memoir is in Diaz’s energy, her love for the tough, in-your-face girls she grew up with, and her ability to turn popular (white) assumptions about Latinx communities on their side. This is a sometimes painful, ultimately triumphant ode to all the overlooked “ordinary” girls.

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