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How to Grow Up
How to Grow Up: A Memoir | Michelle Tea
13 posts | 13 read | 11 to read
A gutsy, wise memoir-in-essays from a writer praised as impossible to put down (People) As an aspiring young writer in San Francisco, Michelle Tea lived in a scuzzy communal house; she drank, smoked, snorted anything she got her hands on; she toiled for the minimum wage; and she dated men and women, and sometimes both at once. But between hangovers and dead-end jobs, she scrawled in notebooks and organized dive bar poetry readings, working to make her literary dreams real. In How to Grow Up, Tea shares her awkward stumble towards the life of a Bonafide Grown-Up: healthy, responsible, self-aware, stable. She writes about passion, about her fraught relationship with money, about adoring Barneys while shopping at thrift stores, about breakups and the fertile ground between relationships, about roommates and rent, and about being superstitious (why not, it imbues this harsh world of ours with a bit of magic.) At once heartwarming and darkly comic, How to Grow Up proves that the road less traveled may be a difficult one, but if you embrace lifes uncertainty and dust yourself off after every screw up, slowly but surely you just might make it to adulthood.
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CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian
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Pickpick

This was one of those books that I read just at the right time. Topics in this memoir in essays by legendary queer San Francisco writer include fashion, money, "scarcity issues," not living in a shithole punk house anymore, moisturizing, food, babies, marriage, exercising, spirituality, class, (not going to) college, and how to honour your 19-year-old despair-striken activist self without falling back into depsair. That last one was my favourite.

CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian From my favourite essay: "I had a terrible sort of revelation, in which all earthly forms of oppression became very visible to me. I could see all their interconnectedness with a horrible clarity that made it difficult to live." Ugh I remember this feeling so hard! 4y
30 likes2 comments
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CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian
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Having recently moved to a new town for a permanent fulltime job, bought the first car I've ever owned, and bought a (also first time) house with my partner, I feel like maybe I didn't just procrastinate owing this book for 5 years and not reading it, but maybe I just waited until the right time? So far topics in this book include not living in a shithole with 20-somethings anymore, managing money, and dealing with "scarcity issues". #QueerBooks

Soubhiville Congratulations! Big life changes! 4y
31 likes1 stack add2 comments
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NeamhainHughes
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Pickpick

Reusing my own picture cuz I‘m cool like that. This book really touched me and I had several epiphanies/breakthroughs reading it. It‘s funny, heavy, encouraging, and super honest. I really enjoyed this book.

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NeamhainHughes
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Got this yesterday from the library and already I‘m half through it. It‘s so validating that it‘s made me tear up a couple times (and I almost never cry at books or movies). It‘s like reading a long letter from the queer auntie/mom I never had.

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Bibliogeekery
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Dolphins! Dolphins are about as close as we come to unicorns in real life.
💜🐬🦄

62 likes1 comment
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Bibliogeekery
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Pickpick

I wanted to like this more than I did because I really love Michelle Tea's other books. There were great parts to this book (the chapter on break-ups was excellent) but a lot of it read like a guide to "growing up" and deriving pleasure from spending a lot of money and having fancy things, which just wasn't terribly interesting to me. #queerbooks

greeniezona I liked this book, but I also very much agree with your criticisms. 5y
63 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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Bibliogeekery
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💜

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Bibliogeekery
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Great lines in this book! #queerbooks

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Bibliogeekery
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Weaponxgirl So true 5y
Reggie Have you read Black Wave by her? That book is crazy, but wonderful. 5y
Bibliogeekery @Reggie I have read it and agreed with your description! 👍 5y
42 likes3 comments
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Bibliogeekery
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I'm excited to be reading this one! Hopefully I can get it done before it expires and disappears from my Kobo. (A bit of a backlog from the library right now) #queerbooks

saresmoore This is one memoir I think I might actually like. 5y
greeniezona I love Michelle Tea! I quite liked this book. 5y
53 likes3 stack adds2 comments
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Chessa
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Some of my faves! #memorablememoirs #booktober

Victorialeanna Follow for a free copy of my memoir 7y
52 likes1 comment
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Tin_House
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Michelle Tea, author of HOW TO GROW UP, VALENCIA, and many more, just after her reading at the Tin House Summer Workshop. What a reading--heart-rending and hilarious all at once. Laughter tears.

Chessa Love her!!! Saw her read in Eugene many years and she was, of course, rad. 8y
46 likes4 stack adds1 comment
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Kitta
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New currently reading :)

3 likes1 stack add