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.

This was a powerful memoir by someone who endured a very difficult childhood in Puerto Rico and Miami. Because of her family, she was better off on her own in adolescence. I'm conflicted about the nonlinear storytelling. Most of the time, I loved following the emotional threads across different points in her life. I did find myself getting lost a few times. Overall, this is a perspective I hadn't read before and would highly recommend it to readers who enjoy memoir.

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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This is definitely not a memoir for everyone as some people may be triggered. That being said, it was emotional and gritty, and I loved it! It's not really a happy-ever-after read, but it is an important one. It reminds us not to judge people...we never know what they have been through (or are going through). It encourages us to help one another. I love it. I've ordered multiple copies for our 20-and-20 Something's Book Club and they can't wait to read it. Thank you so much!

Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz is a memoir about her childhood and adolescence in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach.

Jaquira didn’t have a cozy protective life. At a young age, Jaquira suffered from depression - attempting suicide for the first time at age 11.
As a sometimes runaway street kid with repeated juvenile crimes - she was a high school drop out.
Being, black, female, gay, and poor....Jaquira was very different from her white mother who suffered with mental illness and addiction.

Growing up, Jaquira’s friends were hood girls - vulnerable and strong who taught Jaquira about love, friendship, and hope.
But she also grew up around shootings and 14-year-old boys who carry guns while riding their bikes.

Jaquira loved books as a child because her father did. ( books being the best savior)...
but the parents divorce didn’t help family cohesiveness - safety- structure - or healthy boundaries. Papi was mostly absent emotionally and physically and her mother was severely mentally sick and addicted.

The writing included dialogue/stories - about her ‘unprotected’ growing years.
The impression of a dead baby being found in the bushes - and watching TV news about child abuse, child trafficking, child labor, drugs, violence, and homeless children of immigrants were memories she carried into her adult years.

Overhearing conversations and the TV news about the crime of a dead baby
referenced the murderer as
“the lesbian mother”....
Jaquira learned being a lesbian was part of the crime.

Jaquira had a lot of truth and understanding to work out....
she slowly found her way down a better path to a more wholesome life -
Proud to be black, gay, and female!

Jaquira said she wrote this book for her girls - her friends - the brown black girls - who were like her — who had brutal - self surviving lives as she did.

She and her friends are all women now - not everyone made it out of their tough childhoods - but most did.
Her friends are medical assistance, single mothers, and managers of business.

The message that Jaquira leaves ...
She wishes that she could reach back in time and tell everybody to take care of themselves to live and fight for each other to dance live and laugh.

The story of Jaquira is a sad one - but the non-linear
writing didn’t allow me enough time to emotionally ‘feel’ this story....
Yet...I applaud Jaquira for her strength and tenacity.

Thank You Algonquin Books, Netgalley, and Jaquira Diaz. Wishing Diaz many more years of well being and the valuable gifts received through ongoing writing.

Every so often I get in the mood to read memoirs. I am especially interested in coming-of-age stories, so this one immediately appealed to me when I read the synopsis. I did enjoy the book, especially the parts that took place in Puerto Rico, but I found that Díaz jumps around too much in the chronology for my personal taste. As a reader I found myself getting frustrated by the tangents she would go on in the midst of telling a story. I find that a lot memoirs take place in snapshots of a life; however in this case it was just too many things at once and it was difficult to get a clear picture.

At the conclusion of this book, I couldn’t help but feel that it was unfinished. It is clear that at some point Díaz pulls herself out of the cycle of poverty and self-loathing she grew up in, but this is not really explored in this memoir. Each time I thought she was going to make it out of the tunnel of darkness, she would throw herself back in. Clearly she achieved her goal of becoming a writer and I just wanted to know more about that journey. I wouldn’t consider this book uplifting or particularly inspiring, but it was very real and didn’t sugarcoat anything. Díaz seems to have a lot of self-awareness in writing this memoir, so it was overall an interesting and revealing read.

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A memoir about trying to survive and thrive while growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami. Raised alternately by her beloved Abuela, her Papi, and her seemingly unfit mother, Diaz triumphs over sexual assault, abuse and depression. An amazing journey of growth.

'And the girls I ran with? Half of them I was secretly in love with. Street girls, who were escaping their own lives, trading the chaos of home for the chaos of the streets.'

In Jaquira Díaz’s memoir, Ordinary Girls, readers dig into the influences that shape the life of a young juvenile delinquent. She is more than that, she is first a confused, lonely, little girl who lives with a mother whose mental illness is spiraling into a deeper, darker place. As she grows up, she escapes her broken home or the ‘chaos of home’ and takes it out on the streets, with her tough as nails approach. She finds a sisterhood of girls who have suffered as much, or worse, and makes them family of the heart. It is all about escapism, what else is there in poverty and abuse then reckless abandon? What else is there for them to do but get high, drunk, fight til they draw blood or find themselves knocked out?

Living with a parent that suffers from schizophrenia is difficult even when you have extended family and friends, doctors willing to help, but imagine when the children are left to wonder at their mother’s strange paranoia, behaviors, rages? When a mother’s delusions are real to a child, and no one explains or fixes anything, what is to become of you? Worse, one who is a drug addict on top of it all. How can there be stability when the rest of the adults have fled? From her early childhood in Puerto Rico to their move to Miami, Florida- Jaquira is subject to very adult situations, and always leaving behind the love and support of her beloved abuela, the one person who loves and cares for her. At a young age the shock of what her father sells (drugs) makes no sense to her. Naturally with the people who come around, the children are exposed to the foulest of behavior. She doesn’t know any better about how poor they are, everyone seems to be just as bad off. The shock of violence in the streets is even more horrific, how can anyone maintain their innocence in such a place? Government housing projects full of shootings, stabbings, drug raids, and mouths full of stories that plant the seeds of terror in any child. You toughen up or you don’t make it out alive. You learn fast.

Her parents destructive love, her mother is a woman who ‘obsessively, violently’ loves Jaquira’s Papi (father) who is nothing short of a womanizer, seems fated to ruin. Was it his disinterest in her mother, the crack or coke that caused her to hear voices, or was it this very love that destroyed her? Certainly it was a catalyst, and it made life for Díaz nothing short of hell. Can kids get used to mugs flying over their heads during their parents jealous rages, fights? Doesn’t it follow then that maybe her brother’s bullying and meanness might be born through it too? Like it or not, we learn from our families, and our environment. It’s hard to imagine a softer world if yours is loud, painful. It’s hard to serve kindness when all you have been served is bitter, spitting hatred while your belly and heart rumble for sustenance.

Split between families she has one loving, accepting abuela and another grandmother, the white one, who made feel ashamed of her ethnicity, using her hair as a means to punish her for being ‘other than’. She made sure Jaquira knew she would never be as beautiful as her mother’s side. Strange to think there was more violence in that than all the ugliness she is submerged in, but that really cut me to read. This woman who should lift her grandchild up, make her proud of every cell of her body instead is the first to really make her feel that who she is supposed to be is shameful, low. It’s the same with fear, the adults are supposed to assuage a child’s deepest terrors, not become the monster.

Then Mami begins to see a man, lurking, looming like a murder waiting to happen. Her terror hums inside of Jaquira, all she wants is her parents to be together again, for her to be safe and loved with her abuela but god or the universe doesn’t seem to listen to the cries of a child like her. Just like everything else not meant for children such as she and her siblings, wishes and prayers are ignored. Her father comes and goes, and they behave as if he had never left. “The five of us were the kind of poor you could feel in your bones, in your teeth, in your stomach.” You can only imagine such a poor, if it’s never been your reality.

She is never happy nor in a stable environment for long, her mother steals her back and forces her madness on them- worse, Papi doesn’t seem to care, no one is ever coming to save them. It’s only a matter of time before she grows up, much too fast, and as a teenager becomes a hood rat. Then it was a desire for a violence she could never come back from, because she and her friends would never be ordinary girls who make their sadness seen through “sleeping pills and slit wrists”, if she is going to self-destruct it’s going to be a wild explosion! Beat downs, drugs, gangbangers, court dates, this is how someone will finally take notice, maybe her papi? This is how she lets her age out of it’s cage.

Must Jaquira remain in this state and either end up imprisoned or one day as mad as her mother? Or worse, dead? This is a tale of sadness so dark and overflowing that it becomes rage. This isn’t who she wants to be, she isn’t going to accept this battered, beaten down version of a girl. She will have the last word in who she is! She will fight and make it out, but not without mourning for those who didn’t. Through writing this very book she is reaching those who need to hear that someone has been there, she is a voice in the dark shouting alongside you, someone who wants to see all the girls, who are anything but ordinary, crawl out of the ruins.

A heavy, brutal journey.

Publication Date: October 29, 2019

'Algonquin Books

This is a book I’ve been waiting for since her article “Girlhood: On Not Finding Yourself in Books” was published. Diaz’s razor-sharp language cuts through the the truth of each experience. Details about her childhood, moving, her family and the tension between them reveal moments so relatable to readers that share any parts of her identity. Diaz discusses race and colorism within her family in a way that’s so important and honest; unpacking the shame that we internalize over generations. Diaz’s journey is packed with the fuerza, perseverance, and heart that makes this book an excellent read and perfect choice for the classroom.

Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz

A story of survival, redemption, and the power of female friendship.

From her childhood in Puerto Rico through her perilous teen years as a runaway in Miami to her ultimate success as a writer, Díaz takes us along on the tumultuous journey that has been her life. Her maternal grandmother, Abuela, provided stability and love amid the family chaos of violence, drugs, and mental illness. Her Mami offered only a terrifying picture of what her future might be - a life like her own, steeped in madness and addiction. Added to this mix was an unreliable dad, abusive older brother, sexually predatory men, and poor and unsafe neighborhoods. Jaqui, though bright and talented, struggled with anger, despair and failure, her adolescence defined by partying, fighting, getting arrested, running away and attempting suicide.

And yet, there's such life in this memoir -  dancing on the beach, falling in love, being fed, and thus nurtured, by Abuela and, most of all, experiencing the passionate friendship of girlfriends. There's a teacher or two who sees Jaqui's potential, and the dad she hates disappointing. There's her dawning awareness of the powerlessness instilled in victims of colonialism and poverty. But what moved me most was the bond between the girls.

This book was both tough to read and tough to put down. Just when it seemed Jaqui's life was taking a turn for the better it would crash and burn. And while her transition to successful adulthood was worth cheering, it seemed like a bit of an afterthought, given the lack of detail about how she got there. I was left with a lot of questions when I closed the book.

I received a free copy of Ordinary Girls from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I found Jaqui's memoir to be heartbreaking yet hopeful. I kept wondering where she found that inner strength to push past all of her obstacles. My only criticism was the timeline, I found it very hard to follow, but eventually I was able to connect the dots. This memoir leaves you thinking.

I received an ARC of this memoir from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ms. Diaz writes of her life as a girl growing up in south Florida in the throes of neglect, drugs, chaos, and love--all combined to make for a difficult childhood, but one that ultimately prepared her and her siblings to be successful. I both cried and cheered while reading this book.

Solid 4 stars for this stirring memoir. It was riveting, and I read it in a day. I liked the author's style of writing: it was almost like stream of consciousness. The only criticism I have is that the nonlinear style sometimes threw me off a little bit. I felt like I needed a timeline to follow along.

I am thankful to Ms. Diaz for her courage in sharing her life growing up with a schizophrenic, addicted mother, physically and emotionally absent father, and abusive brother. I appreciate that what got her through more than anything were her friendships with "ordinary girls". Thanks also to NetGalley for the advance copy.

This memoir is raw and honest. A true profile of courage and struggle for survival. Jaquira Díaz intrepidly details her journey of growing up in the housing projects of Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, living with a schizophrenic mother, and finding her own identity. Diaz’ honesty in telling her story offers hope to so many.

I troubling but well written story of race, gender identity & mental health. Jaquira Diaz's voice is a definite must hear.

I have found a new favorite writer! Diaz writing is so descriptive, so honest, I felt like I was living it with her. This memoir and all it’s chaos and characters will stay with you.