Through its violent climax, Mean depicts the fractured reality of inhumanity and trauma. I wish they could be replaced with something else. White girls are the Holy Grails of Western civilization. She keeps us laughing, even through the darker moments, coloring the novel’s world in her sarcasm and flippant wit.

However, it’s the author’s strident language that gives the work its energy, in her humor and crisp, paratactic sentences that seem to punch us at every turn. It is not difficult to empathize with the girl wrapped up in the meanness she cultivates. We watch Gurba paint herself redly mean, as a way to protect the vulnerable parts exposed to the world’s inhumanity: racism, sexism, homophobia. Gurba’s work caused me to step back and think about all the invisible imprints – traumatic or not – left on me, those I’ve left on others, and what kind of help or harm is subconsciously created in the world. Myriam asks, “if molestation is a circle, a circle of life, then isn’t the hand of every molester working through the hand of every other molester?” She not only explores the invisible imprints her molestation left behind on her own person, but on those caught in its malicious cycle. We learn that Macaulay was in fact molested by the father of another student. Yet, one of the strongest aspects of this book lies in its empathy. When Myriam enters junior high, we sit to her right as Macaulay, a young classmate, assaults her in broad daylight, beneath their shared desk. Mean allows the reader to experience all the injustices that shape a person’s life, as well as the “invisible imprints” left in the aftermath of trauma.

When she is forced to apologize to white girls who hurled racial slurs at her, we feel the seething, justified rage, “‘Sorry,’ I said without any sincerity.” Gurba reconstitutes mean as armor to strive for, to idolize.

“Being a bitch is spectacular.” And we believe her. Through short, scenic chapters, we experience both her biting wit and language, as well as the growth of a protective layer around herself, a layer that the author describes as mean. We follow her through childhood as she gets in fights with boys, meets her best friend, Ida, eats “Mexican” casseroles made by white people, and first experiences the manipulative behavior of white fragility in the classroom. Each word we gulp down slakes our need for the empathy and revulsion for another human’s articulately and hilariously depicted inner landscape.įrom the nonfiction novel’s outset, young Myriam darts across the page with a force meant to mesmerize the reader. We devour each word out of shame and love, out of fear and humiliation, out of lust, out of understanding and out of panic. Myriam Gurba’s Mean is made up of language so rich and well-crafted, we feel as if we could eat it.

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