Rent Girl

by Michelle Tea and Laurenn McCubbin

Book Overview

Like Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl, Michelle Tea's Rent Girl is an illustrated novel about a young dyke's adventures in and out of the sex industry on both the East and West Coasts. A... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0867196203
• ISBN13: 9780867196207
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Last Gasp
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Dee in Sacramento

The book is written differently than any other book I have read so that caught me off guard at first. I learned to enjoy the way Michelle Tea wrote and was fasinated by her life. My only complaint is that it ended way too soon. I am going to purchase more of her work. The artwork is wonderful.

Michelle Tea's greatness never fails.

As a fan of all of Michelle Tea's works, this one keeps track with her amazing writing style. It's not normal, but it's not unbearably weird. This book is hard to put down, and when you do put it down, you will think about it. It goes in hard into how exactly her life was, real, gritty, and not glossed over. She doesn't just focus on the good times, she gets into the raw of it. The drawings that accompany are amazing as well. This will go down as one of my favorite books.

IN "TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2004," FRONTIERS NEWSMAGAZINE

This graphic novel is less about a working-class lesbian's foray into the sex industry and more about the liberation of life experience. Tea reinforces the fact that she's the real deal: Her prose is colloquial and well-crafted--typos notwithstanding. And McCubbin's illustrations? Each is a little piece of perfection: shimmering, warm, and bright.

Truth Behind Closed Doors

Michelle Tea never seems tired of writing about her life. If she keeps up to her to usual standards, there's no reason why the rest of us would ever tire of reading about it either. RENT GIRL focuses on Tea's history in the sex trade, a witty graphic novel/memoir that is not only humorous and inspiring but beautifully illustrated. Tea is a fantastic writer who does not shy away from revealing the "mechanics" of her exploits to an encounter with a bad case of crabs. There is no "woe is me" monologues or angry tirades against an unforgiving society. She describes the absurdity of her clients, from a self-proclained warlock to cocaine-addicted business men. Her writing masterfully remains passively unapologetic and full of the witty prose that Tea is known for. The art work is spectacular. Laurenn McCubbin's eye for detail captures near-perfect facial expressions and the raw emotion of Tea's work. I hope the two will collaborate again. RENT GIRL is simply amazing. Michelle Tea's personal accounts are simple yet complicated with jaded opinions and poetic verses about faked sex acts and looking for stability in a chaotic world. This won't disappoint.

beautifully written, beautifully drawn

Lyrical, insightful, honest, and rich with detail, Rent Girl provides an unvarnished, up-close look at sex work and hustling without ever being prurient or preachy. The story is fascinating, the prose is poetic, and the art is sensational. Fans of Eileen Myles and Phoebe Gloeckner will love this book. Just amazing.