Description

The autobiographical essays in The Girls in My Town create an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. Reaching back to her grandmother’s childhood and navigating through her own girlhood and on to the present, Angela Morales contemplates moments of loss and longing, truth and beauty, motherhood and daughterhood. She writes about her parents’ appliance store and how she escaped from it, the bowling alley that provided refuge, and the strange and beautiful things she sees while riding her bike in the early mornings. She remembers fighting for equal rights for girls as a sixth grader, calling the cops when her parents fought, and listening with her mother to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” the soundtrack of her parents’ divorce. Poignant, serious, and funny, Morales’s book is both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of how a writer discovers her voice.

About the author(s)

Angela Morales lives in Pasadena, California, and teaches at Glendale Community College. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and is a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award for nonfiction.

Reviews

"Beautifully written, sharply perceptive. . . . I love this writer's voice, the way she writes humor and sorrow and disappointment with such humanity and intelligence. These essays are wonderfully universal, for all of their intimacy. I never wanted to stop reading."—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail 

"[Morales's] is the kind of writing that makes reading so rewarding."—Story Circle Book Reviews

"[Morales's] is the kind of writing that makes reading so rewarding."—Story Circle Book Reviews

"Morales has a strong, lyrical voice, and her essays and anecdotes can be humorous and loving and darkly meditative as they address family, beauty and violence, loss and love. In short, this collection is as varied, charming, stark, and inspiring as life itself, in Los Angeles or anywhere."—Shelf Awareness

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