Writers, out of fear of making (powerful, influential) enemies, can insist too much on politeness. This is one way fear impairs their work until they can’t bring themselves to state an opinion clearly that might offend. Although sometimes blame can be shared with the editor who decides that the intrepid word nerd, one without the privileges bestowed by fame, should go easy. In a world where very few are famous. (Great piece. Now dilute it.) And sometimes the writer is simply trying to maintain a pretend respectability, exclusively for print, which even the most cowardly and despicable can manage. Excessive politeness, wherever it comes from, is stifling, inaccurate or, in its hypocrisy, deserving more of an eyeroll or solemn nodding followed by a jerkoff gesture. Of those I still think kindly of and wish to see have a breakthrough, I feel cheated: let’s hear what you really think and how you really think it. How bout some honesty, huh? Would a 40 or a bestseller help loosen your tongue? But I have no use for empty bravado, either, much less the garbage-clogged sea of social media sneers and jeers. What I seek is an echt writer to give it to me straight, to deal a verbal beatdown when the situation demands, and to do it with some style, some SAUCE!* Baby! Myriam Gurba’s Creep (2023), a corrosive, no-nonsense essay collection at the intersection of memoir, literary criticism, crime, and history, does just that. It’s bracing and all too hard to find. And this isn’t bias for a California writer talking.
I suspect anger is what, in part, allowed her to remove the shackles other writers are resigned or content to wear. In essay after essay, as her targets started piling up, I came to realize that there’ll be no letup, she’s in attack mode. Her nominee for folk sainthood: Lorena Leonor Gallo aka Lorena Bobbitt. She provides ample reasons why. When she talks about misogyny and sexual violence, she draws on so many sources, from stories of the most infamous killers to dubious legends to failures of the justice system to Bobbitt’s history as a victim of abuse to personal experience, she proves, if #MeToo has somehow dimmed in the mind after all these few years, that they’re pervasive. One appalling fact: “Fewer than 1 percent of rapes lead to felony conviction.” Tone matches subject. It’s revolting, terrifying, especially considering the common reaction: willed ignorance, silence, glibness, indifference, victim-blaming and -shaming.
In the past, I’ve expressed doubts about the value of anger. Based on my own experience, I can recall quite a few examples of people saying or doing dumb shit out of anger, lashing out at those who didn’t deserve it, making a bad situation worse. Exuding anger, forcing everyone to step lightly or else. Road rage. Anger as a justification for anything (including violence, of any sort). Becoming consumed by anger. Blinded by anger. Gurba, however, shows that it can be harnessed: the book is heated without being written in ALL CAPS. It’s approachable and persuasive. And for her, it’s a catalyst. “It seemed to me that making room for rage was the compassionate thing to do. Without rage, how do people heal? Without rage, how does one produce dignity?”
Family isn’t safe from her ire. Based on what she writes, it couldn’t be. As she points out: those closest to girls and women tend to be the most likely to inflict misogynistic views and sexual violence. Fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins. In one essay, “Mitote,” she destroys the myth surrounding her own abuelito, Ricardo Serrano Ríos, a myth trumpeted most of all by abuelito. It’s partly the pathetic tale of a man obsessed with a former classmate of his he never appeared to be especially close to, Juan Rulfo, writer of the landmark novel Pedro Páramo. Ricardo (as Gurba refers to him) made his money as a publicist but he’s also a journalist and a mediocre poet. Among the many stories he puts his listeners to sleep with concerning his “friend” is one about how he lifted from Ricardo’s poetry to write the novel. And yet Ricardo, mysteriously, never received anything close to the praise and adulation Rulfo did for his work. At the same time, Gurba highlights how Ricardo would grow up to reject his parents, with their humble background and means of making a living - the sort of humble background that served as grist for Rulfo’s novel. With so much bitterness toward the famous Mexican writer, one would expect Ricardo to regret the connection and scorn any thought of associating with him. But after Rulfo dies, he sees a money-making opportunity and embarks on a lecture tour centered around his “friend.” A grim reminder that such characters always haunt the high-minded world of literature. Aside from that, Ricardo also declined to pay his wife for her contributions to his work, thwarted her artistic ambitions, and, on the side, had a family with his mistress. In this instance, rage leads happily to ridicule. Not that abuelito thought much of women writers, anyway.
On immigration, Democrats and Republicans are nearly indistinguishable. Especially when election season comes round, it’s hard to find any public figure with the spine (or the will) to defend, staunchly, the radical position that immigrants are human beings, that immigration is beneficial to the country, and that it’s a measure of strength and a source of pride to be a refuge for the vulnerable. Doesn’t seem to matter how often it’s pointed out who composes the pool of low-wage labor (that is, who contributes significantly by doing the worst jobs) or that they tend to be more peaceful and law-abiding than native-born citizens. Donald Trump and JD Vance will spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets despite repeatedly being corrected. One appalling passage to keep in mind when a candidate asks for your vote or sitting down to your next meal:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently ranks agricultural laborer as one of the country’s most dangerous jobs, more dangerous than policing. Among the occupational hazards are human trafficking, wage theft, and debt bondage. Pesticides seep into the farmworkers’ clothing, skin, and bloodstreams. Farm machinery maims. My dad recalls a mother and father who couldn’t afford a babysitter and so they brought their kids to the fields. One of them got plowed by a tractor. Dad also remembers when there were no porta-potties in the fields and women had to walk in pairs to the eucalyptus groves. As one would squat, the other would do her best to hide her coworker behind an old blanket.
The representative liberal she later gets impatient with is somewhat of a caricature, easily whaled upon: a simpleton who thinks all it takes to defeat Trump is to urge people to vote. What if people take that advice and vote for Trump? It’s one drawback to Gurba’s method: nuance, the right modification or elaboration, gets lost occasionally. She also accuses this liberal of presenting a true but lopsided argument and one could say the same for her. The book is polemical, so she reserves virtually no space for questioning her own position. Other blemishes include the stray awkward line or weak joke. Overreliance on pedestrian insults (the epithet “asshole” refers to everyone and no one). To sum up my criticism of Creep: Perfection has eluded her.
There’s much more to admire. I never used the fugly-looking and -sounding word “Latinx” but I understood the need for a gender-neutral term for our group. And now I’m officially making the switch to a word I’ve discovered in these pages: “Latine.” Along with contributing this small but important change to my lexicon, Gurba is a font of illuminating facts and anecdotes, though she doesn’t exactly lecture. She’s digressive, chatty, has a flair for the dramatic, and, despite the heaviness of her material, regularly displays her humorous side, such as in a piece on a bad relationship. “I considered coming out to my parents again. (The first time I’d told them I was queer, they’d answered, ‘No,’ and we’d left it at that.)” Or, in an ambivalent piece on Joan Didion, when she travels to Quintana Roo:
I was assigned to condominium ocho, where I shared a room with Sara and Thomas. Even more intimately, I shared a bed with Sara. I regaled her with stories that made my wife seem cool while Thomas brought me herbal tea to soothe my melancholy and cramps. I wasn’t hurl-myself-from-the-balcony depressed (which would’ve been fine, we were two stories up and I would’ve landed in plush sand), but I was unable-to-enjoy-the-splendor-of-the-Caribbean blue. Beyond our sliding glass door, the sea twinkled, teasing us with her sequins, and I couldn’t bring myself to honor her with a smile or hello. I couldn’t even muster a wave. I could only offer sighs. The limpest of breezes.
I tested this book against Bolaño’s distaste for memoir: everyone’s been through the eye of the storm. Perhaps I haven’t read enough memoirs - not a favorite genre of mine - to become sick of victimhood. But while there’s a noticeable lack of self-humor in Creep, which tends to throw water on the fire, I can’t say how Gurba would have told her own story to avoid the charge. She’s a woman who’s suffered “innumerable sexual assaults.” Innumerable sexual assaults. And part of the problem is that it largely remains hidden. Ironically, the collection builds to the piece with the least fire, the title essay, in which she numbly describes, in excruciating detail, the sadism of a monstrous boyfriend, a fellow teacher who, at the end, manages to evade justice again, with the backing of the school district, and continues to work with children. Perhaps if she would have amassed more hard evidence…? I thought of Ezra Edelman’s masterful documentary OJ: Made in America: Nicole Brown Simpson documented her abuse.
Myriam Gurba’s farewell: “And to everyone who got in the way of this book happening, fuck you.”
