Description

‘A wonderfully disgusting book … invigorating’ DAZED Best Books for Pride Month

The 25th anniversary edition of Michelle Tea’s classic coming-of-age story, now with a foreword by Maggie Nelson, award-winning author of The Argonauts

‘One of the few truly life changing books I’ve encountered’ Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby

Fleeing Tucson and her troublesome on-and-off ex-girlfriend, Michelle lands in queer San Francisco’s riotous underbelly, stumbling through her early twenties in a haze of nightlife, drug adventures, scams and a string of hookups, break-ups and make-ups. As butches and dykes spin in and out of her orbit, she considers the force and casual cruelty of their desires and her own. Heady, beer-sticky and brimming with life, Valencia is a sharply observed and piercingly funny chronicle of a year lived close to the bone.

‘If you want to know how dangerous and great and awful it is to be a girl, you’ll scarf Valencia right up’ Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls

‘Michelle Tea is an intoxicating writer, delivering sentences that land with the snap and force of a punch’ Guardian

Publisher Review

Valencia is one of the few true life-changer books I’ve encountered. One of those books that gets casually slipped to you, and then, a couple hours later, you understand you’ve been living all wrong — Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby If you want to know how dangerous and great and awful it is to be a girl you’ll scarf Valencia right up. The street today is full of girls if you haven’t noticed — Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls Michelle Tea is an intoxicating writer, delivering sentences that land with the snap and force of a punch * Guardian * I consider Michelle Tea a literary MOTHER. I will forever tip my hat to her and the timeless and immortal text that is Valencia — Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends