Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz
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I commend Jaquira for putting her most vulnerable side front and center. Her life was no walk in the park, but she was a fighter through and through. In this memoir, she touches on her early life in Puerto Rico filled with abuse, drugs, neglect, instability, and fear & her move to Miami which was aggressive, violent, and mentally unstable. A brutally tumultuous life for any girl, but one she had to navigate in order to survive, grow up, and ultimately reach her dream of writing.
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The one drawback I have is the timeline of events. I wish it were in chronogical order, instead of skipping around, just so her age would be clearly delineated in order to better grasp what her experience would've been like during certain events.
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Big thanks to @algonquinbooks & @netgalley for the opportunity to read this #whitingaward recipient, in exchange for my review. Congrats @jaquiradiaz on your well-deserved award for #ordinarygirls!
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How do you review someone’s life story? I had heard that this book was brutal and deserves all of the trigger warnings.

However, as someone who has loved grittier memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, Ordinary Girls was a raw honest story about the author’s experience growing up in Puerto Rico and then her efforts to survive with her sister on the streets of Miami.

This is not a happy story and Diaz communicate the physical and emotional turmoil with authenticity and bravery.

The timeline Diaz provides is not linear and since I listened to the story on audio, at times it was difficult to follow. Conversely, Diaz’s decision to contextualize her own story around the experiences of girls she saw in the news and such was a compelling, evocative choice.

The beauty of the title was interesting to me and, due to Diaz’s struggles it seems to serve almost sardonic in nature. Has she titled her brutal experiences as ordinary because stories like hers are far too common among girls and women are so common place that those who experience them are considered ordinary? It’s a depressing, albeit compelling thought.

Overall I gave 4/5 stars if only because I found the novel hard to follow but I would recommend it to anyone who loves grittier stories or looking to learn more about the LatinX experience.

Jaqui Díaz’s life as a child and teenager is constant chaos. This memoir tells of her survival through abuse and her own bad choices, and the value of her friendships over the long haul.

The writing in this memoir is powerful. It doesn’t ask for your pity or sympathy for the abuse and hardships the author endured. It just shows you how life is for some unfortunate kids. The language and depictions of some incidents in her life make it easy to feel empathy and even justification for some of her poor choices (that generally led to more negative consequences). The beautiful part was recognizing the nurturing relationships and friendships that lasted throughout, even when they didn’t feel helpful in the moment.

As a memoir that reads as engagingly as a fiction story, this book also shows that even without the additional abuses, the author’s life was never going to be easy. As a Puerto Rican woman struggling with her sexual identity, she had so many struggles to face without adding in her father’s infidelity, and her mother’s and grandmother’s mental illnesses and addictions. It would have been a story about overcoming adversity even if the rest of her circumstances had been ideal.

This book would be recommended for any adult who enjoys memoirs and learning about other people’s lives. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars.

The best memoirs are those in which the author is unafraid of transparency and vulnerability, of holding themselves accountable for living their lives, able to write with clarity of the good and bad. With such emotional exposure, the reader is able to examine the author's life, to relate, to learn, and sometimes even to gather renewed purpose. In ORDINARY VOICES, Jaquira Diaz explores her life vividly and saliently.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for the review copy and opportunity to take part in this blog tour in celebration for the paperback release on June 16th!

This is one of the hardest memoirs I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Jaquira Diaz’s writing is so raw and personal that it pulls the reader directly into her past alongside her as she recounts her history with mental illness, abuse, assault, drug use, sexuality, as well as stories about her interactions with her friends and family. Diaz’s story is one that is very heartbreaking, but that is full of hope and will inspire those going through similar hardships to hold on to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She speaks about the effects of growing up in a biracial household with a mentally ill mother, the racism and prejudice she faced as a young child from both family members and strangers, and the path her life was set on from a young age. The one constant in Jaquira’s life is her friends, her found family- people she is still strongly connected to today. While this is a memoir about hardships and survival, it is also a memoir about human connections. The writing does not hold back- it is graphic and in your face and does not shy away from showing the horrors that young women, specifically young women of colour, go through, and the long lasting effects of such actions. Throughout the entirety of her story, Diaz reiterates that despite everything in her life telling her not to succeed, she never gave up. Unflinchingly honest, her writing is a force to be reckoned with, and this is a story that will stick with readers for years and years to come.

Content warnings for mental illness, suicide, self harm, assault (sexual, verbal, physical), abuse, substance abuse, racism.

Ordinary Girls is not an easy read. It’s shocking, sad, and honest. Jaquira Díaz holds nothing back as she tells her story. But as someone who should not have survived, her story is also inspiring, a reminder that every voice deserves to be heard, that every life has meaning.

"We’re supposed to love our mothers. We’re supposed to trust them and need them and miss them when they’re gone. But what if that same person, the one who’s supposed to love you more than anyone else in the world, the one who’s supposed to protect you, is also the one who hurts you the most?" -Jaquira Díaz, Ordinary Girls

Born in Puerto Rico, relocating to Miami, and living in the projects, Jaquira suffers many abuses—at the hands of her family, her peers, and strangers. Her life is a daily struggle as she grapples with her place in her family, racism, and her own identity. She finds solace with her friends, her fellow ‘ordinary girls.’ It is those friendships that will give her the strength to eventually find a better path.

"Living with Mami meant we could never have friends over, could never have birthday parties or sleepovers like all those normal, ordinary girls. We were afraid our friends would find out about her madness, her drug use, her violent outbursts. So we kept it to ourselves, our secret shame, hiding bruises from teachers and classmates." - Jaquira Díaz


Reading Ordinary Girls is like listening to a close friend tell the story of their life—a story you haven’t heard before. A story that shouldn’t be true. As you listen, it’s mostly chronological, but sometimes it weaves a bit, including pieces from the history of Puerto Rico, stories about other women with their own powerful messages, weaving the stories that make the author’s message complete.

So much happens in this book that is not included in the synopsis. So much that touches on current events—the lack of help for women struggling with mental illness, the challenging obstacles that queer women of color face every day, and even the insufficient response from Trump during Hurricane Maria.

"I know something about the in-between, of being seen but not really seen. I have lived there my whole life. I mean quite literally that I’m a child of colonialism, born into poverty on an island that was seized and exploited, first by Spanish colonizers, then by Americans. My family, although they’re also US citizens, are colonial subjects, and most of what we know about our black family is limited because of slavery. We can trace as far back as Haiti, but before then, nothing. Like most black people in the US, the Caribbean, and Latin America, our histories, our cultures, our people, were stolen." - Jaquira Díaz

Ordinary Girls is an important story. One we need to learn from. We must find a way to help those who are struggling to help themselves. See their faces. And hear their voices.

5 stars

"For the girls they were, for the girl I was, for girls everywhere who are just like we used to be. For the black and brown girls. For the girls on the merry-go-round making the world spin. For the wild girls and the party girls, the loudmouths and troublemakers. For the girls who are angry and lost. For the girls who never saw themselves in books. For the girls who love other girls, sometimes in secret. For the girls who believe in monsters. For the girls on the edge who are ready to fly. For the ordinary girls. For all the girls who broke my heart. And their mothers. And their daughters. And if I could reach back through time and space to that girl I was, to all my girls, I would tell you to take care, to love each other, fight less, dance dance dance until you're breathless. And goddamn, girl. Love."

This is a searing memoir. I wasn't sure what to expect from the blurb or the critically acclaimed reviews. I knew it would be fantastically written, but I wasn't sure what kind of story it would be. Regardless, I was utterly, completely, heartstoppingly captivated by Jaquira Diaz' words.

Diaz writes about her life, and the multiple lifetimes it feels like she has lived as, in her words, an ordinary girl. Her experience is singular yet representative, poignantly alone and yet surrounded by other similar echoes of other girls' experiences. While the main story is Diaz's, the vibrating truth speaks for all the women intersecting with Diaz's voice and identity.

As a half-Black Puerto Rico child born to a Black father, poet and womanizer, and a white mother, hounded by schizophrenia and addiction, Diaz's life emerges into uncertainty and follows the fracture lines as her tale unfolds, spanning the family's early life in Puerto Rico and their move to Miami Beach, her parents' separation and Diaz's own struggles to cope with the constant cycle of change. And it's not just her tale that unfolds, but those of the girls and women who are facets of her life: her Abuela, her grandmother, her mother, her younger sister, her neighbors, her friends, her enemies, strangers on the street.

Through Diaz's words, all these women and herself and her community are connecting, spiraling, fracturing, unending. There are so many words I could use to describe the flow of the narrative but let's settle for hypnotic. That feels the most true.

What an important and showstopping debut. I look forward to whatever Diaz decides to write next—you best believe I'll have that on preorder.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to @algonquinbooks for sending this my way. This memoir is about finding yourself and also your chosen family. I really enjoyed this

Ordinary Girls is a memoir by Jaquira Diaz that spans a wide range, beginning with her childhood in Puerto Rico and her family's move to Miami. Sadly, like so many ordinary girls, Jaquira experienced chronic instability, a culture that views women as sexual objects yet not beautiful unless they have the "right" skin tone or the "right" hair, and a family that was just not there for her in any way and even allowed her to be abused, but she never gave up on herself. Jaquira has such a strong voice that despite having a somewhat scattered structure and style, this was an enjoyable and powerful memoir. I read Educated around the same time and was struck by the fortitude of these two young women who were so drawn to books in chaotic environments and were able to carve a path for themselves while showing such empathy for their toxic parents and their younger selves.

I got the widget for this book from the publisher when I was doing the blog tour for the paperback because I wanted to look through it. Memoirs usually aren’t my thing and while I didn’t read the whole book, I know that this book is a heart wrenching experience that is written with Diaz’s whole heart.

The Quick Cut: A memoir about growing up in the housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach from a woman who was struggling with her sexual identity at the time. 
A Real Review: Thank you to Algonquin Books for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
 Fiction and non-fiction are two very different writing styles. Typically with fiction, the best work does a phenomenal job of transporting into a different world with fantastical details and over the top drama. With non-fiction, the writer has to do everything they can to really put you in the action and ensure that you fully understand what is happening in as realistic of a manner as possible. Although similar in the manner that they take you to unique places you have never been before, it is hard to convey emotions that put you in the shoes of the author. With this memoir from Jaquira Diaz, she walks the readers through the complex struggles of her difficult childhood in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. 
 Jaquira Diaz had a very hard childhood. Detailing out the relationship between her mother and father, she walks the reader through life growing up in Puerto Rico, her family moving to Miami Beach, and how it all came crumbling down when their plans in a new country went south. Between struggling with her sexual identity and being stuck between her waring parents, she had to deal with her mother's mental health problems, sexual abuse, and the bad choices made that put her behind prison bars. 
 I would be remiss to say that this is a dark book. Everyone has their own problems at some point in life, but what she goes through with her family? That is on a whole new playing field of struggle and I cannot even imagine what that must have been like. I cannot imagine how she managed to get through everything she did. She even went a step beyond and recounted them in this novel. She truly shows how a person can rise above the insanity of the environment they were born in to find a better life. 
 A big part of her life story revolves around her mother's losing battle with her schizophrenia. The way she lays out what happens to her mother throughout her life is very smart in the way it lays out just how important it is to safely identify and work through these types of problems. There is a known connection between having diagnoses of mental health issues and addiction problems. All too often, those who do not have the resources or ability to deal with their mental problems try to self-soothe and medicate by using alcohol, drugs, or other debilitating habits. Once you start down that road, it becomes increasing difficult to turn around and go down the healthier path. Watching her mother take the addiction path is not only devastating, but it highlights an issue we have as a society. In order to deal with some of our addiction issues as a whole, we need to deal with the reality of what mental health issues are seen as. 
  The only issue I had with the memoir was the last fifty pages or so. In the end, she starts quickly jumping around timeline wise and it takes you out of what is happening having that many changes in only a page or two. While I understand the importance of laying out what happened in each of these times, I think it would have been more impactful if she spent longer than a page or two talking through them. The quick hits make it harder to adjust and stay engrossed in the story. 
 A powerful memoir about growing up in the worst of situations and learning how to pull yourself out of it. 
My rating: 3.5 out of 5

Welcome to my very first time participating in a blog tour!

I had never been a part of one of these before, but when I got the invitation, including the description of Ordinary Girls, by Jaquira Díaz, I just couldn’t say no.

I think it says a lot that I, who almost never read memoirs, who prefers fiction and fantasy where the young protagonists find some magical way to overcome their situations, was compelled by the description of Ordinary Girls. It’s a memoir about the life of the author, Jaquira Díaz. She’s a woman of color who was born in Puerto Rico and then moved to Florida with her family. It’s a story of struggling to fit into different environments, of trying to connect with her friends and her family, of dealing with the surrounding violence, and with always searching to figure out who she really is.

So, anyway, let me jump into the review, shall I?

The book follows a semi-linear narration. The chapters follow the passage of time in general, with Díaz growing older and older as the pages keep turning. But often, there’s breaks with other moments in them. Díaz introduces other moments, related moments, into the narration of her story. She’s either looking forward or remembering something from before, and while this should have felt confusing, it never did. Every single one of these connections felt meaningful, and it was clear that there was a reason for Díaz including them.

Speaking of these moments, I was able to fairly easily keep track of Díaz’s life, and never really got lost among all the events. I was also able to keep track of the different people who appeared and disappeared throughout her life, and there’s a fair number of them! I have a tendency to get confused when skipping around, or when I meet too many characters at once (to the point where I sometimes make notes to keep track of who is who in my phone), but I never had to do that with this book. It felt clear, and, more than anything, it felt real.

This memoir is a story about connection, or the lack of it. The book is called Ordinary Girls, and leads the reader to believe that the story is about the friendships Díaz makes throughout her life, and how they’re all connected by being normal. And a very large part is about that. It’s about the girls and women Díaz meets throughout her life, and how she comes to connect with them. It’s about how they struggle to find their way through the messed-up world they live in, all while sticking together. It’s about figuring who they are, and their concurrent journeys of self-discovery, which could lead them to be closer together but could also tear them apart.

And it’s also about family. Díaz struggles through the pages to connect with a mother who suffers from a variety of mental disorders and addictions, with a father who has a multitude of affairs, with connecting with both her Black and White heritages, from both sides of her family. The most painful parts of this memoir had to do with family, and with how Díaz had to sometimes struggle to survive despite them. But it was fascinating to see how these experiences came to shape her, to give her a life and a voice that was not only worth listening to, but powerful.

This is a memoir. This is the story of a life of an “ordinary girl”: someone you might meet just walking down the street, or taking the elevator, or checking their phone while taking the train to the city. This is a story of an “ordinary girl” who struggles, as we all do, to find her voice in a world that doesn’t seem to want to listen. And this story of an “ordinary girl” stood out to me, and it made me feel inspired and hopeful and connected.

Regardless of whether you often read memoirs or not, I think this is a book you might enjoy. I will say the subject matter is often difficult, and Ordinary Girls does not shy away from any of the experiences the author and many people go through, whether that be emotional or physical abuse, rape, and drug addictions. So be prepared for all those topics if you plan on picking this book up.

Ordinary Girls was a great read, and I was so pleased to be a part of this blog tour for Algonquin Books. You can buy your own copy from the Algonquin website at this link.

In Jaquira Diaz’s debut book, Ordinary Girls, she chronicles her life growing up on the streets of Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. Originally published last year and winning awards like the 2019 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, this memoir is poignant, engaging, and a book that everyone should read at some point in their lives.
Diaz’s story is a truly inspiring tale of a juvenile delinquent who seems like she wouldn’t amount to anything, yet defied the odds and turned her life around. The way she recalls her younger self and the things she did with both fondness and frustration is heartbreaking. However, the way she weaves the story of dealing with her schizophrenic mother, neglectful father, two abuelas (one loving and the other not so much), and friends she considered family, into a memoir/nonfiction piece is amazing.
The descriptions and historical background of Puerto Rico mixed with Diaz’s own life stories shows her Puerto Rican pride and how she is a culmination of all of the things that happened in the past. However, being defined by these things isn’t necessarily a bad thing sometimes. She takes the phrase “ordinary girls” and uses it to describe the simplicity of what life was like for her back then and how it wasn’t ordinary at all, but to her it was. Despite being a street fighter, runaway, and high school dropout, Diaz candidly expresses how she takes those labels, along with her struggles with drug abuse and depression, and tries to make sense of her identity and strove to be ordinary, or what she assumes “ordinary” to be. The way Diaz tells her story is unlike any other memoir I’ve read and it is fascinating to read about what it was like for her to grow up in the projects.
If you’re looking for an own-voices story or a book that will allow you to live someone else’s life for a short time, then this book is a must-read! This novel is inspiring, raw, and novel-esque in the way it’s told. The paperback version will be released on June 16th and it is definitely one to keep an eye out for.

Jaquira Díaz' memoir is different than the types of books I usually read and review, but I was intrigued by the description of a real life story of resilience. I think the thing I liked the most is the infusion of culture in this text. Díaz is a mixed-race Puerto Rican with a White mother and a Black father. She spent her early life in Puerto Rico, and when her family moves to Miami they keep their culture with them. Spanish language is peppered throughout the book in a seamless way, as well as elements of Puerto Rican history. It's a history and culture that shapes much of who Díaz is, and I loved its inclusion. There are things I didn't love, mostly based on personal taste, such as the amount of swearing and graphic sexual descriptions that simply aren't my taste, but are also very authentic to Díaz' experience. Overall I think this is a good read about hope, resilience, and the ways that our circumstances may shape but don't define or limit us. (Full review on my blog June 20)

Throughout her life, Jaquira encounters all manner of struggles - Poverty, racism, sexism, depression, drugs, and sexual assault. Her life was not pretty and yet her story needs to be shared. There are numerous families experiencing similar situations and it's important for these narratives to be shared. I hope this book serves to bring awareness to all of these topics so that we as a human race can work together to look out for our children, to be aware of how other people live and to help build a community of support and acceptance and understanding.

I am part of the blog tour for this book, so my review will be posted on my blog and IG on June 16th. Thank you so very much to algonquinbooks for the invitation to be part of the blog tour for OrdinaryGirls.

Ordinary Girls tells the story of Diaz's life from a young childhood in Puerto Rico to an adolescence in Miami to an adulthood still searching for where she belongs. There are dysfunctional families that fall apart, friendships that transform into makeshift families, struggles being overcome, and so much more. It's Diaz's story, her life, but it's also a relatable story for so many young women.

Diaz doesn't shy away from the difficult topics. She writes openly about suicide and addiction from both sides. She writes about violence and racism and sexual assault. There's a struggle with her own sexuality. There's the growth from a teenage "delinquent" (just a girl who doesn't know any other way to cope with life) to a young woman who knows she can be better and does the only thing she can think of to prove it to herself by joining the navy. And throughout the memoir, Diaz sprinkles in bits of Puerto Rican history to help define where she comes from. It makes for an interesting and moving combination.

The writing is strong. I admit that some of the shifts in tense and changes from more personal writing styles to more journalistic styles were jarring for me. I don't read much nonfiction, so I'm used to a more uniform style. But once I stopped reading each section as a type of chapter and started reading them more as linked essays, I got into the flow of the book much easier.

Ultimately, Ordinary Girls was an intriguing and emotional piece that I'm glad I read. It's not something I would have picked up on my own, but it's relatable and for the parts I couldn't relate to, it's enlightening.

Overall, I gave it four out of five stars. If you enjoy memoirs, this is definitely one worth picking up.

I received an ARC copy from NetGalley exchanged for an honest review.

Ordinary Girls is a debut memoir by Jaquira Díaz. It follows her life and takes us on a journey. It shows all sides of her life the good the bad and the ugly. It also tackles important issues such as depression and sexual assault. Its a fascinating memoir and a must-read.

Jaquira Diaz has not had an easy life. Living in Puerto Rico her parents fighting all the time then moving to Miami and having them split. Her mom turns to drugs and men and is later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Longing for love and a happy family she turns to her friends and the streets.


My heart broke for young Jaquira on just about every page of this book. Her dad didn’t really care about anything and her brother was a jerk. She lived more on the beaches and bounced around friends houses than she did with either of her parents; doing drugs at such a young age and hanging out with men almost twice her age.

Jaquira Diaz’s brutal honesty and survival are inspiring. There is no way to read this book without feeling all the emotion and emptiness that Jaquira felt and not want to jump through the pages and time to get to her, to help her.


Jaquira jumps around a bit, telling the story of her life in this book and I found that refreshing instead of her just laying out her young life in chronological order. Writing it this way kind of gives you a better idea of what certain things lead to some of stuff that she did or why she felt a certain way. I love that she unapologetically tells her life’s story, not looking for pity, but to prove we are not defined by the worse things we’ve ever done.


I didn’t have the chance to read this book when it first came out last year, but I’m so glad I get to take part in the blog tour for it’s paperback release.

Jaquira has lived a life that is not for the weak of heart. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the projects, she experiences poverty and turmoil at home. Her parents' unstable relationship leads to frequent fights that create multiple unstable living situations, as they are constantly evicted and shipped from house to house. Her abuela helps to raise her and appreciate her heritage as a partially black woman from Puerto Rico. Her family moves to Miami in search of a better life when she is a child. Her mother develops schizophrenia and turns to drugs and her father doesn’t always stand up for her. Jaquira is forced to grow up and experiences sexual assault, drug abuse and suicide attempts as she tries to find her way.

Jaquira’s memoir is very vibrant and alive - I could essentially see the scenes she described in front of me. Her friends and family are depicted so well that I was enticed with her story. The memoir mainly follows her childhood and teenage years as she bounces from house to house and relationship to relationship. I loved her perseverance and her ability to rise above at the end. She told her story without omitting details, showing the reader who she really was and who she has become. Her story pulled me in and I think she did a great job of explaining her heritage and battles.

This book was amazing! Strong plot! Powerful characters! A plot that held my attention the entire time!!!! I couldn’t put it down. I needed to find out what happened next!