Gurba is an extraordinary performer with an enthusiastic spoken word fan base, and the Mean's voice-driven quality should appeal to them directly Rather than a memoir, this is a nonfiction novel, a la How Should a Person Be-Gurba's life provides the plot points, but a novelistic impulse provides the frame. Gurba turns what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy, differentiating between "classic" (stranger rape) and "avant garde" (molestation by a classmate) sexual assault in a way that's in your face and unforgettable. Race, class, gender, and sexuality all break open in unexpected ways in Gurba's hands. This is a confident, funny, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.

The Believer, a ten-time National Magazine Award finalist, is a bimonthly literature, arts, and culture magazine based at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, a department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In each issue, readers will find journalism, essays, intimate interviews, an expansive comics section, poetry, and on occasion, delightful and unexpected bonus items. Our poetry section is curated by Jericho Brown, Kristen Radtke selects our comics, and Joshua Wolf Shenk is our editor-in-chief. Issues feature a column by Nick Hornby, in which he discusses the things he's been reading, as well as a comedy advice column.

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society--in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them--from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity. A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does--it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it. Creep is Myriam Gurba's informal sociology of creeps, a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions that plague the United States and create the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. Through cultural criticism disguised as personal essay, Gurba studies the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly distribute suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. Yet identifying individual creeps, creepy social groups, and creepy cultures is only half of this book's project--the other half is examining how we as individuals, communities, and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us. With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

Latina. Goth. Lesbian. Desiree Garcia knows she's both weird and a weirdo magnet. To extinguish her strangeness, her parents ship her to Saint Michael's Catholic High School, then to Mexico, but neurology can't be snuffed out so easily.