This is an awesome graphic memoir of Tea's experience doing sex work in Boston and San Francisco. Very real and at times quite horrifying. Her girlfriend seems to be abusive. I worried that she (Tea) was drinking too much. Seems like I should issue numerous trigger awards for trauma survivors. Sexual abuse, and a pervasive sense of constant danger. ( )

Published by Last Gasp of San Francisco, CA; donated by T.McCarthy; Words by Michelle Tea, a well known writer/contributor/autobiographer in the Bay Area. Most of her work touches on sex work, feminism, and queer culture to name a few. She has won numerous Lambda Literary awards for her works. Laurenn McCubbin illustrates the work and, like Tea has done work portraying sex workers in her recent show/thesis: A Monument to the Risen: Emotional Labor, Intimacy and the Spaces of Sex Work.

"Rent Girl" itself seems to reflect a murkier memory of some other person's life and although the heroine may be named Michelle she could be anyone's Michelle--trying to make things work and, trying to walk the circuitous line of the sex industry. ( )

Someone who loves this book a lot lent it to me. I liked it, but not as much as she did.

I enjoyed the writing a great deal and was impressed that the "graphic" aspects of the novel did not override the plot and characters in the actual story. However, I was disappointed in the story as a whole. I found Tea's work as a sex worker extremely interesting, but as a narrator I found her to be whiny and often annoying. Though she courageously displayed her weaknesses as well as her strengths, I still could not help but want more from the characters whether it was development, background information, or some resolution. Being that it is a memoir, everything can't always be pleasantly resolved. However, every character eventually disappear without any acknowledgment that they had previously existed.

The story begins with great strength and interest as Tea describes her life as a lesbian sex worker in Boston. As her travels bring her to Provincetown and Tucson, the reader can feel that Tea is running out of steam (and so is her story). Her girlfriend, for the majority of the piece, is a self-centered and one-dimensional woman who introduces Tea to the world of prostitution. Along the way, the two meet up and live with various other sex workers and drug addicts. While the ride is rocky and the writing is smooth, the characters are emotionally limited and appear as caricatures.

www.iamliteraryaddicted.blogspot.com ( )

Michelle Tea is a born storyteller, and this story of a lesbian prostitute is written so conversationally that you feel like you're in her kitchen while she's making you lunch.