I’m not going to review this book. Instead, I’ll just share some of my favorite quotes. Rivera’s writing is just so quotable. Suffice it to say, this is an important book. It’s important to brown kids and queer kids and to those who question their place in the world. It may be even more important to old white hippie ladies and privileged young people who forget to question our biases and the role acceptance plays in ones life.
If you know a kid who needs this book, buy it for them. Buy a copy for the public library. There will be thought police who try to keep this one under wraps for its subject matter and language. That makes it all the more important that we spread copies of the book around.
Now, some words of wisdom from Gabby Rivera.
“It looked like the Salvation Army of bookstores, and who doesn’t love a little dig through salvation?”
“You want answers. Make your own religion out of doubt and curiosity. Don’t go running after one God.”
“…God was at best an elevated spiritual feeling and at worst one of the most brutal myths people have created.”
“Libraries had zero tolerance for bullshit. Their walls protected us and kept us safe from all the bastards that never read a book for fun.”
“The underbelly of America creeped me out; the sociopathic patriarchy was still some old devil who never got put down.”
“You said reading would make me brilliant, but writing would make me infinite.”
Sharon Edge Martin 