Product Description

Dirty, sweet, pop and poetic, Michelle Tea is like a twisted Spice Girl who can actually sing - and write. - Mary Gaitskill

Passionate Mistakes charts the turbulent adventures of one girl in America from Boston's teenage goth world to whoring in New Age Tucson to arriving in San Francisco's dyke underground. Honest, sarcastic, lyrical and direct, Tea's work is the most literate and sophisticated treatment of these subjects to date. She's a reincarnated jill johnston from when jill johnston used to be cool.

At 27, Michelle Tea is an ex-prostitute, ex Goth, ex-drummer for Dirt Bike Gang, ex-straight girl, ex-lesbian separatist vegan, ex-Catholic schoolgirl, and ex-resident of Chelsea, Boston's working class slum. She is also poised, with this breakthrough debut volume, to become the spokesperson for America's young queer girl mutant horde.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #907986 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"... a gem of endangered narration from a loud and highly marginalized subculture, in particular the third wave of feminism. Tea's work resists categorization, and like all surprising vanguard literature, it's the news—a hunk of lyric information that coolly, then frantically, describes the car wreck of her generation and everything that surrounds it."
— Eileen Myles, The Nation

"At 27, Michelle Tea is an ex-prostitute, ex-Goth, ex-drummer for Dirt Bike Gang, ex-straight girl, ex-lesbian separatist vegan, ex-Catholic schoolgirl, and ex-resident of Chelsea, Boston's working class slum. She is poised, with this breakthrough debut volume, to become the spokesperson for America's young queer girl mutant horde."
— New Books Weekly

"The legacy of thirty years of feminism... Rollicking and blistering, pained and hilarious, wired and wild-eyed and smashingly good. The narrator, diving into fourteen, trying to be an INXS groupie, feeling grossed out by the role but wanting experience that doesn't have a name."
— Laurie Stone, Village Voice

...a gem of endangered narration from a loud and highly marginalized subculture, in particular the third wave of feminism. Tea's work resists categorization, and like all surprising vanguard literature, it's the news--a hunk of lyric information that coolly, then frantically, describes the car wreck of her generation and everything that surrounds it. -- The Nation, Eileen Myles

About the Author
Michelle Tea is the prolific author of the Lambda Award-winning Valencia, the graphic novel Rent Girl, the "inspired queer bildungsroman" Rose of No Man's Land, and other books. She was a 1999 recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award for fiction. Her critically acclaimed books have appeared on "books of the year" lists in publications ranging from the Voice Literary Supplement to the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Coulda Been a Contender
This supposedly radical tale of adolescence, shallow political conviction, lesbianism and prostitution was a letdown. Tea's prose reminds me of those girls who will natter incessantly to anyone who will listen about their self-inflicted degradation with all the gory details but not a point to be found. Lacking introspection and only rarely showing flashes of wit, this one's a simplistic catalog of truly sad events. It is not helped by its affected prose style, featuring teen-girly exclamations, run-ons, and erratic capitalization. This is beneath Tea, who doesn't seem willing to write at her obviously high intelligence level. She does a great disservice to this material, which could have been incisive literature rather than the forgettable trash it is.

worth a read if you like ms. tea
although this wasn't a life changing, earth shattering book by any means i thought it was worth my time. it was fun and personable. a good first attempt and worth a read when you consider the effect she has had on young, queer liturature. don't expect perfect prose or classic liturature, but if you're looking to kill a few hours with a "querky" queer gal or want to read the debut by the author of valencia, than give this book a shot.

Horrible prose with a boring existence to boot.
This book seemed like it would be great from the other reviews I've read of it, and the girl at the store who told me it was super! Anyhow... Eventually while reading this book, I had to get out a pen to mark commas into the text. This coming from a not too anal-retentive laid back 25 year old covered in tattoos. I don't know what kind of person Michelle Tea is, but I think she wants us to think that she's not the smartest girl with the decisions she makes in life. And I'm not even talking about her becoming a prostitute....which happened to be the only interesting part of this book. Anyway, if you want an imaginative or well written lesbian book, don't read this one. Try "tipping the velvet" or "fingersmith" by sarah waters.....they are absolutely incredible.