Dirty Girls Social Club
I first became aware of Alisa Valdes Rodriguez through Luke Ford’s profile of her breakdown and 3400-word, ranting resignation letter from the LA Times. Here’s Cathy Seipp’s abbreviated Alisa profile:
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is the former L.A. Times Latin music beat reporter who caused a big stir in the media world when she wrote an infamous and nutty 3,400-word flameout resignation letter 2 1/2 years ago that accused the Times, among other things, of genocide for using the word Latino to describe Spanish-speaking New Worlders. (Alisa felt they should be called Native Americans. Or Aztec descendents. Or something.) After she quit, she tried to write fiction, decided that “I suck at writing books” (as she put it to Jim Romenesko, the virtual media water cooler, in an open letter begging for another newspaper job), hit bottom, had her baby on Medicaid while unemployed….then wrote a novel about a bunch of Latina girlfriends called “The Dirty Girls Social Club”…and sold it at auction for $475,000 to St. Martins…
So I guess I had my hopes up that this book - which I bought in a charity shop for £1 - would be particularly good, or at least good and crazy. It was neither, though it did get me through the non-sleeping portions of a 9 hour flight, and I was eager to find out what happened in the end.
Maybe the problem is that I’m not a chicklit reader; I don’t really understand the popularity of this book, the tone of which often made me wince. I’m not just talking about the failed attempts at recreating British usage and the downright awkward voices of the characters. (For me, few things are more cringeworthy than the frequent, inappropriate use of “y’all”.) I felt embarrassed for Alisa as I read much of this book. Por ejemplo:
I’ve thought about it. I need to spread my wings and fly, Sel, try to be the poet I have always wanted to be. But not in English. Not in their language. I want to write poetry about me and who I am in my own language. I want to write of being a lesbian in Spanish, a language that has never embraced women like me. I want to take my scythe and cut through the jungle of ignorance.
I feel a little mean even quoting that, but come on.
AVR may be dishonest, self-important, and petty, but one has to be impressed with the way that she has managed to claw her way back from professional ruin. Better writers than Alisa Valdes Rodriguez have been permanently devastated by less horrific circumstances than hers. I was just disappointed, after the massive hype this book received, that it was so mediocre.