Harley Loco
A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side
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4.6 • 47 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Rayya Elias composes “a classic, blood-stained love letter to bohemian NYC”* in this raw, powerful memoir—with an Introduction by Elizabeth Gilbert.
“Terrific...Rayya’s stories blew mine away.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
When she was seven, Rayya Elias and her family fled the political conflict in their native Syria, settling in Detroit. Bullied in school and caught between the world of her traditional family and her tough American classmates, she rebelled early.
Elias moved to New York City to become a musician and kept herself afloat with an uncommon talent for cutting hair. At the height of the punk movement, life on the Lower East Side was full of adventure, creative inspiration, and temptation. Eventually, Elias’s passionate affairs with lovers of both sexes went awry, her (more than) occasional drug use turned to addiction, and she found herself living on the streets—between her visits to jail.
This debut memoir charts four decades of a life lived in the moment, a path from harrowing loss and darkness to a place of peace and redemption. Elias’s wit and lack of self-pity in the face of her extreme highs and lows make Harley Loco a powerful read that’s sure to appeal to fans of Patti Smith, Augusten Burroughs, and Eleanor Henderson.
*Craig Marks
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
You know you're in for a memoir of dysfunction, depression, drugs, drink, and despair when Elias declares that as a child "being bad was what I did best." By the time she was seven, she and her family had left Syria because of increasing political and religious tensions and moved to Detroit, because of its large Arabic community, to start a new life. Elias soon discovers that there will never be a better life, for her parents were more interested in using America for what they can get from it than in Americanizing. Bullied at school and failing to fit in at home or at school, Elias remains an outsider trying to find a way into a circle of friends and into this new world; soon enough, she has rejected so much that there is a void inside her, and she starts to fill that void with drugs, sex, and punk rock, hardening herself against the pain. In this compulsively page-turning memoir of her search for herself, Elias takes us on a tour of her hell as she moves from Detroit to New York's Lower East Side; once in New York, she sells drugs, does drugs, discovers new and more powerful drugs, falls in and out of love, becomes an award-winning hair stylist, performs with punk when she can, goes to jail, and eventually hits bottom and goes straight. Haunting and mesmerizing, Elias's story captures powerfully the vulnerability of being an outsider and the deep yearnings to be a part of something, to fit in.
Customer Reviews
Brilliant, Raw and Authentic
What a book and what a woman indeed. An honest self portrait of a woman, her battle with drug addiction, and her journey to recovery. May you rest in power Rayya.
This IS Addiction ! ! !
Honest, Raw, Real. Rayya brings the reader along to witness her life as she becomes a heroin and cocaine addict in NYC, barely scraping by, day by day. Skillfully, she relates to us on an emotional level that made me feel as if I knew her.
There is no glamor or phony drama added for excitement. She simply tells her story. Remarkable ability to recall details, and describe situations so vividly, that you, the reader, are there with her. It’s a hellish, scary, sometimes degrading, and often death defying journey. Thank you Rayya for bringing us along, through those harrowing years that would have killed many of us.
I wish I had met you.
Harley Loco
All I can say is: WOW! I read this book in one day. It is raw, funny, sad, hilarious and compelling. It is a roller coaster ride with a woman who is beautiful, talented, loved and, sadly, is also a drug addict. It is impossible to stop reading when you realize that this could be your sister, or daughter, or best friend. An incredible journey with a woman that you will want to have coffee with the minute you finish the book! Great read.