Rent Girl
by Michelle Tea
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michelle TeaIllustrator: Laurenn McCubbin
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08
ISBN: 0867196203
Number of pages: 239
Publisher: Last Gasp
Book Reviews of Rent Girl
Book Review: Perhaps not _Mrs. Dalloway_, true, but to read it is to experience it.
Summary: 4 Stars
Look, this isn't a normal book about a normal subject. You don't get a neatly wrapped-up story of character development. What you do get is a slice of the deeply conflicted experience that providing erotic labor can be. If you're not interested in that experience, either because you've lived way too much of it yourself, or because it's too far from your own world -- well you probably won't like the book.
But if you can somehow empathize and put yourself in the position of being really poor, or that of either providing or making use of erotic labor (prostitution, stripclub, paid phonesex, sugardaddy relationships, whatever) -- well, this book might just give you a valuable experiential ride.
There's not much that's cuddly in the book, although some of the protagonist's personal relationships have their cuddly moments. The book is somewhat amoral -- it neither judges against nor condones prostitution. The protagonist unabashedly says "this is who I was and this is what I did," but Tea doesn't try to retro-fit these experiences and sanitize them to make them seem sex-positive, nor does she make it entirely a cautionary tale.
I'd definitely recomend this to those who work in erotic laborer and to their friends. Should a john read this? I'm not sure. It will quickly disabuse him of the fantasy that he shares an emotional connection with his providers. Since in many cases that's precisely the fantasy he's paying for, and precicely the one that the provider profits from selling, if a sufficiently intelligent and compassionate john reads this, it just might ruin it for both parties. lol.
And if you think about it, that's what makes this book as good as I think it is -- its gritty, ambivalent, unapologetic realism.
I agree that the book could use some proofreading, especially in the latter half, but that's a minor point.
Summary of Rent Girl
Publishers Weekly called Michelle Tea ""a modern-day Beat, a kind of pop ambassador to the world of the tattooed, pierced, politicized and sex-radical queer-grrls of San Francisco. [She] dramatizes the hopes and hurts, apathies and ambitions of young lesbians looking for love in the Mission District."" Rent Girl continues Tea's graphic and uncompromising autobiographical bender, telling the story of her years as a prostitute, with provocative and richly illustrated work by Laurenn McCubbin.General Books
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