Like a Woman
-
- €10.99
-
- €10.99
Publisher Description
Like a Woman follows Taylor, a working class white girl too tough and too tender for her own good, who helps friends, rescues strays, and carries her battered copy of Ghandi on Non-Violence everywhere she goes. She reads curled up in the sewer drain by Venice Beach under the shot-out flashing Chevron light, yet still fights at the drop of a dime, cuts johns who say the wrong thing, and steals anything she can get her hands on. Her girlfriend, Jackson, a young African-American street worker who lives in the back of a junk yard totaled limo, dreams of becoming a writer and receives daily guidance from her recently deceased mama. Joining them are fellow homeless street kids; high-end sex workers with Ph.Ds; Eddie, a butch transvestite from Pasadena who runs a 'Speak-Easy' for johns who just want to talk; a fierce and loyal Rottweiler named J. Edgar; and Dutch, a barrel-chested, flat butt old cowboy who eventually helps Taylor get off the streets.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First-time novelist Busman begins this gut-wrenching tale of childhood sexual and physical abuse in Los Angeles toward the end of the Vietnam War. At age seven, Taylor is already keeping secrets about her uncle's late-night visits to her bed and tiptoeing around her violent, alcoholic mother. Three years later she's smoking pot, running with a band of adolescent thieves, and spending nights alone in the park to escape her mother's rage-fueled attacks. By the time she's 15, she's a full-fledged runaway living on the streets, selling drugs and herself to survive. Accustomed to having nothing and no one to rely on, Taylor is shocked to discover a semblance of community, family, and love among the other young girls that call the city's alleyways and SROs home. But even as she begins to relax into this bit of happiness, a brutalized Taylor looks expectantly, and heartbreakingly, over her shoulder for the blow she expects will come. Switching between past and present and interspersed with musings from an adult Taylor, Busman's prose is fittingly straightforward and, at times, bleakly, brilliantly sparse. This is a laudable debut.
