The last time I felt this particular way about a book was when I read Dorothy Allison's, Bastard Out of Carolina. I'm not quite sure how I stumbled upon buying Girlchild, but I do know that I did so because I thought I might be able to use excerpts from it for a forthcoming workshop I'm teaching that covers social class as one of the themes. I was right. Now I just want to create a workshop/literature class around poverty so I can discuss this book alongside other work such as Allison's debut or Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley and Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell.However, this isn't just a book about poverty or trailer parks or bar tending alcoholic mothers--it's a book about intelligence, family, and survival. The landscape might appear bleak, and yes, there is the sexual abuse that also existed in Bastard Out of Carolina, but the narrator is a glittering gem--a beer tab star in the dirt--she is a white rose made from toilet paper by a man on a barstool, and I think she gets more of a chance at freedom than did Bone.The prose is breathtaking; each vignette an absolute treasure, each one building on the last (even if the text has been blacked out; even if the page offers a cryptic word problem with an even more cryptic list of multiple choise answers), until finally, the reader has read a book both heartbreaking and utterly heart lifting. This novel goes into the file I have in my heart for beloved books. Bravo! I enjoyed this story told from the perspective of a little girl with an adult like mind who is using The Girls Scout Handbook as her guide for growing up. You get insight into the complex world of, 'trailer trash,' and how life and the County is perceived. I found lots of true but sad lines like, "...there was no reason for the County to send Mama to college to get smart when, for less time and less money, she could go to vocational school and be made useful."
What do You think about Girl Child (2000)?
This book was sometimes hard to follow and the ending just left me unsatisfied.
—Jennie
Difficult reading, but wonderfully written.
—tarni
