There’s honestly not a lot I can add to the reviews already out there of this book except reiterate the fact it is a must read and I will read anything Myriam Gurba writes in the future. Essays on creeps and the way toxicity creeps into society while also a lovingly crafted family history, exploration of being a mexican queer woman, a look at trauma, abuse and racism and how it’s effects linger and so much more. This collection weaves memoir with cultural history and touches on people who are famous for one reason or another including joan didion, richard ramirez, lorena bobbitt, william burroughs and the infamous novel ‘American Dirt’. So many trigger warnings but well worth the read- I’m mad it took me almost a year to get to it.

Thank you to the author Myrium Gurba, publishers Avid Reader Press and Simon and Schuster, also to NetGalley, for a digital review copy. All views are mine.

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. I adore the trip down memory lane with the 80's toys, Barbies and Cabbage Patch Dolls and Garbage Pail Kids!

2. She captures the fleeting and elusive nature of childhood and everything in it, even death, in a single image: Quote loc. 972.

3. She provides some really interesting and important information on prisons and ex-prisoners in the essay entitled "Locas," like that ex-prisoners are hired less often than their counterparts without a prior conviction, but they tend to have lower turnover and get promoted faster. Also, it's assumed by many that time in prison is the debt ex-prisoners pay to society, but they have to keep paying once they're released-- restitution, return of damages, and for their state provided defense, if they used such. loc.1278

4. "White Onion" contains the most fascinating and meaningful discussion of cannibalism I ever expected to encounter.

5. I adore the note about the power and necessity of literary analysis and criticism: Quote loc. 2225.

6. Gurba writes deeply insightful passages about the experience of SA and sexual trauma, such as loc. 3240. I won't quote it here, to protect those sensitive to triggering.

7. These essays don't read or feel like nonfiction. They're riveting in style and surreal in places. They remind me so much of bits of magical realism. She reminds me so much of like if Brando Skyhorse and Sherman Alexie had little literary kittens.


Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. The essay on Didion is probably my favorite. It explores some interesting stylistic, but more importantly ethical questions about perhaps the US's formost creative essayist: Quote loc. 2200. What bothers me about this piece is the tone. It's so academic, so removed, not like Gurba's other work at all. Is she mimicking Didion, mocking her? Hard to tell here. Still a great piece, but hard to ingest.

A few words on each essay:

1. "Tell" An essay about how children's games can be deadly, and how deadly games can create deadly men. Gurba writes about a fascinating case of three brothers who accidentally kill a nanny during a game, and all go on to become remarkable individuals.

2. "Cucuy" is a brilliant essay on the serial killer The Night Stalker, who was active where Gurba lived when she was only a little girl.

3. "Locas" is an essay about abuse. Big abuse, the kind an organization does to an individual. Little abuse, the kind an individual does to a littler individual. What it's like to be abused. What it's like to know someone who is abused. What it's like to live with abuse and after you've been abused. Top 3!

4. "Mitote" is an essay about home as a place, as people, and as conflict.

5. "The White Onion" is an unforgiving and eye opening analysis of Joan Didion's creative nonfiction work as both racist and willfully closeminded.

6. "Navajazo" is about gendered violence and the states failure to protect women from violence twice: first, repeatedly, from the men closest to them, and second, only once usually, from themselves when they commit capital crime in self-defense.

7. "Waterloo" is about one of the author's really racist exes and her really racist family, but it's also about knowing what you want and respecting your own boundaries.

8. "Slimed" is about comedy with a capital C and misogyny. Here is my trigger warning for extreme language describing SA and violence against children and women.

9. "Itchy" is an extremely powerful essay about racism in education and how hard reforms must be fought for. “Mexican-Americans,”writes the essayist E. Michael Madrid, “tend to be identified not by what they are, but what they are not.”In this way, Mexican-Americans are like lesbians, another group of people who tend to be identified not by what they are, but what they are not. I belong to a diaspora defined by deficiency, and I keep a running list of things I’m supposedly missing. Loc. 3484 Top 3!

10. "Pendeja, You Ain't Steinbeck" is about the challenges of finding success for writers who are women of color, and what Gurba has experienced in her own career and striving for greatness.

11. "Creep" is an essay about how social and cultural structure help to reinforce institutional misogyny, from sexual harassment in the Supreme Court to domestic violence that leads to murder. Gurba details her own horrific experience with domestic violence. (Note: this story is harrowing.) Top 3!

Rating: 👁👁👁👁👁 creeping eyes
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Aug 31 '23
Format: Digital arc, Kindle, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
🎞 nonfiction
📃 essays
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family stories, family drama
👭🏽 intersectional feminism
💇‍♀️ girls' coming of age

A powerful book of essays that rocked me to my core.
Myriam's writing has a way of digging it's way into the fibers of you cells and echo throughout your system.

I'll find myself coming back to essays in the future.

Myriam Gurba does it again. This a cutting collection of essays that discuss what a Creep is. It's a deep dive into the many faces of the abuser. Her style is funny but brutally honest, painful yet real. She intermixed her personal experience to provide us with a version that is barely palatable and forces us to examine our own role.

A wholly original voice - Gurba is a dynamo here. Moving storytelling along with razor sharp analysis and cultural criticism. What more could you want? Everyone should read this!

4.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley and Avid Reader Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is a book of essays, bit and pieces, that come together to be a force of nature. She shares her different experiences - family, friends, abusive relationships, history of Mexico/California, colonialism, racism, machismo, belonging, and commentary on our various faulty systems - education, immigration, penal system, law enforcement, etc.- yet brings all these seemingly disparate parts together in a way that beautifully tells a story as only she can do. The most impactful stories is her essay about American Dirt/Jeannine Cummins, the abusive relationship with Q, and the rape and sexual assault by a serial rapist/killer that haunts her although she's said to be "lucky". These were the heavier stories but even in the lighter ones there is an underlying seriousness. Her writing style is raw and filled with so much brutal honesty that these impactful essays will having you thinking for days to come, as I'm still doing now.

Gupta’s writing deftly combines lived experience, research, and pop culture references into one of the most engaging and gripping series of essays I’ve read in a while. Her insights as a Mexican American, queer, woman, survivor, and educator are the bones that support her work. Her observations are sharp, witty, and purposefully uncomfortable in how they force you to grapple with things something you may not wish to. Some may be confused by the order, expecting it to be chronological within the essays or in their ordering, but thematically I think they move fine. I would highly recommend this collection and will, personally, check out Gupta’s other publications.

Myriam Gurba invites us to give a critical eye to those who lurk in the darkness and the villains that walk untouchable in broad daylight with her recent essay collection, CREEP: ACCUSATIONS AND CONFESSIONS. This poignant look at historical figures thrown in the media spotlight with their heinous crimes while their victims are left forgotten in the shadows. Gurba asks readers to take a step back, and search for the things left unsaid about the women whose lives were erased from the narrative.

I found the essays tough to get through and did not end up finishing the book. Perhaps I was missing the points, but I had trouble understanding the essays I did read and found the string of thought within them was often broken or jumbled.

This was quite an interesting and important book. The triggers in this story are what the entire book is about: CREEPS in all parts of society, sometime where you would least expect them, sadly. This book is quite a touching and key collection of essays about the struggles of a young, gay, Mexican woman (and her immigrant family) who come to the US where many of the events she has written these essays about occurred. I found the writing to be so good, compelling and thoughtful as well as very honest and clever, too. Definitely enjoyed this haunting book that will be in my thoughts for a long time to come...

What an outstanding, incredible writer and one-of-a-kind voice! This was at times extremely difficult to read, but that speaks to the importance of what she's written about and the fact that these experiences deserve to be told and known. This was such a unique blend of memoir and social criticism, with so many topics woven into Gurba's personal stories, which are hauntingly, eloquently told. Just an extraordinary work of storytelling.

Dark and disturbingly funny! Gurba has a way of connecting her experiences to your own that makes her relatable and enjoyable to read even in most distressing tales.

Creep, by Myriam Gurba, isn't a book I would have normally read. Not that I have anything against this kind of book, or author, but it's just not the kind of read I seek out on my own. What a shame that is, and how lucky am I to have come across this gem. This has been a passionate and powerful read about personal trauma and hardship, written in a powerful and confident voice, one I hope become more familiar with as I turn to some of her other work.

I strongly recommend this book, especially for those who aren't used to seeing through such a lens.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the digital advance copy I received in exchange for my honest opinion.

I loved Myriam Gurba's Mean and I think I enjoyed this one even more. A few essays stretched long but no one else is writing like this and she is auto-buy for me.

Witty and provocative, Gurba has one of the most distinct voices. She expertly weaves the personal and political to explore some of the darker aspects of society. Although topics can be heavy, Gurba’s wry humor and incisive, clean writing make for a smooth reading experience.

Some references felt dense or went over my head, but that’s a bit of a me problem.

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.

I received this as an advance reader copy from Avid Reader Press and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.

5 Stars!! I absolutely loved this essay collection. I liked the various explorations of men who are creeps and how they are permitted to keep up their bad behavior. I liked the stories of Gurba's childhood and how even men in her own family were problematic. I also appreciated the Mexican history and how the US has a history of racism for many many years against Mexicans. Her writing is sharp and insightful and I can't wait to read more from her.

These feminist essays got under my skin and anyone that has ever had a bad experience with a man, who does this exclude? should pick this book up. While some essays were stronger than others, I HIGHLY recommend picking this up.

- CREEP is a collection of essays that are part memoir, part historical exploration, all righteous rage.
- Gurba is a master at channeling her experiences into sentences that cut right to the heart of the problem and of the reader.
- This book is a tough read. But if you're up for it, it's a truly excellent excoriation of the many overlapping systems that make space for predators to thrive.

Now THIS is writing that does not hold back on punches! CREEP by Myriam Gurba is outstanding. Gurba's fiery prose delivers truth upon truth upon truth. These are the things we need to hear, we need to consider, and we need to discuss. I only with I'd started reading Myriam Gurba long before now!