by  Bri Kane

From: Bust

When you read Mean by Myriam Gurba, you’re going to laugh, and cry, at some really gross and mean things – but that’s kinda the whole point. Mean is a very introspective book, exploring Gurba’s childhood, adolescence, and early adult life. By analyzing her own memory, Gurba forces the reader to do the same. She describes the book as a “novel that is memoiristic,” meaning not exactly a memoir, but not exactly fiction — it blends the two genres through memory, analysis, and retrospection.

Gurba is direct, casual, and very funny when I probe her about her novel, which explores trauma, meanness, and assault in various forms, as well as the mental and physical repercussions that follow. She hopes the novel will allow readers to better analyze these themes, as well as expand the American literary canon to include a Molack (aka Mexican-Polish-American). Raised in a multi-racial home in California’s Santa Monica, Gurba has a geographically placed understanding of race, gender, and growing up queer. Thankfully, it sounds like she was raised by some pretty awesome parents, especially since Gurba tells me some of her first toys as a child were “Barbies, pistols and books” — what else could an aspiring writer need?

Gurba is explicit in her attempt to expand the American literary landscape to include people like her, because it really is important to see ourselves in characters of books, TV and movies. She explains, “I think that the book paints a very particular depiction of what it means to be an American in my particular corner of the United States. And, I hope I kind of widen the canon of American literature by inserting a mixed-race Chicana into that canon.” This expansion is personal for Gurba, because she “never read about a protagonist who was Mexican, and Polish and middle class.” Read Rest of Article Here