Description

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it’s officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird.While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she struggles to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she’ll have to compromise her artistic process if she’s going to properly ride out doomsday.

Publisher Review

'I worship at the altar of this book. A keen portrait of a subculture, an instant classic in life-writing, a go-for-broke exemplar of queer feminist imagination, a contribution to crucial, ongoing conversations about whose lives matter, Black Wave is a rollicking triumph.' Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts --------- 'I loved Black Wave. It is completely open and alive, shimmering with the energy of a person desperately seeking their place in the world, only to have the world end around them. When the world does end I hope it ends like this - with dream-synchronicity, an explosion of love, and fucking Matt Dillon on a bookstore counter.' Megan Bradbury, Everyone is Watching --------- 'Black Wave is definitely Michelle Tea's most fearless book. It's a radically honest and scary book. And trust me, it's a bloody and wonderful place Michelle has spun, fantastic, dark, and entirely awake. It shook me up.' Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls -------- 'Michelle Tea is like no other writer. Black Wave amps her uniquely seductive whirl of ugliness, hilarity, and brainy, sexy, revelry to produce a work with the centripetal pull of a maelstrom. You will be sucked in.' Heidi Julavits, The Uses of Enchantment