About Dahlia Season
Chicana. Goth. Dykling. Desiree Garcia knows she’s weird and a weirdo magnet. To extinguish her strangeness, her parents ship her to Saint Michael’s Catholic High School, then to Mexico, but neurology can’t be snuffed out so easily: Screwy brain chemistry holds the key to Desiree’s madness. As fellow crazies sense a kinship with her, Desiree attracts a coterie of both wanted and unwanted admirers, including a pair of racist deathrock sisters, a pretty Hispanic girl who did time in California’s most infamous mental asylum, and a transnational stalker with a pronounced limp.
As high school graduation nears, Desiree’s weirdness turns from charming to alarming. Plagued by increasingly bizarre thoughts and urges, Desiree convinces herself she’s schizophrenic, despite assurance otherwise. In college, she finds Rae, an ex-carnie trannyboi, who becomes the June Carter to her Johnny Cash. With Rae’s help, Desiree answers the riddle of her insanity and names her disease.
Combining the spark of Michelle Tea, the comic angst of Augusten Burroughs, and the warmth of Sandra Cisneros, Mexican American author Myriam Gurba has created a territory all her own. Dahlia Season not only contains the title novella, but also several of Gurba’s acclaimed stories.
Reviews
“Freud could end up twitching in his grave if he got his hands on Myriam Gurba’s Dahlia” Season. – tatiana de la tierra
“A feast of life and culture, Dahlia Season may earn Gurba a place on the list of accomplished Latina writers like Julia Alvarez, Christina Garcia, and Sandra Cisneros.” – Jacklyn Attaway, Rain Taxi
“Dahlia Season expands the field of Chicanx scholarship through a depiction of 1980s middle-class, first-generation Mexican American youth culture. The text exemplifies Gurba’s gift for illuminating the vulnerability of those who are queer, that is, of those who do not fit narrowly defined societal categories. Using extraordinary skill and sharp wit, Gurba creates three-dimensional characters whose various identities intersect and reveal the complexity of race, class, gender, and sexuality. However, Chicana nerds of color are at the heart of Myriam Gurba’s collection. Similar to the writing of Felicia Luna Lemus, Gurba focuses on Chicanx characters’ ability to develop by using their difference as a source of strength and knowledge.” – Justine Hernández, Voces: A Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies
“Warning: Myriam Gurba’s sensual, precise prose is addictive. Dahlia Season seduces and hits hard. This collection lavishes love, recognition and respect, relief and acceptance for the parts in all of us that twitch or misbehave.” – Bitch Magazine
“Dahlia Season is a fantastic book filled with stories of sexy badass girls we rarely get to see in literature.” – Ali Liebegott, author of The IHOP Papers
“Gurba rocks the Latina goth undercover-teenage-dyke world with a spirit of ferociousness, outrage, sultriness, pure punk rebellion, and joy.” – Matthue Roth, author of Never Mind the Goldbergs
“Myriam Gurba leads the reader on a fascinating journey to a world hidden in plain sight.” – Marc Acito, author of How I Paid for College…
