First published in 2000 and reissued by Serpent’s Tail to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Valencia by Michelle Tea. This autobiographical novel by American author, poet and arts organiser, Michelle Tea, chronicles a year in her life, aged 25 in 1995-96, documenting a tumultuous ride of wild experiences through the San Francisco dyke scene of the ‘90s. Tea describes it as “a snapshot, more or less, of my twenty-fifth year on earth, written not how it happened but how I felt it happened.”
From the moment I started reading, it instantly reminded me of first delving into Eileen Myles’ Chelsea Girls a decade ago, which follows Myles surviving through 1970s New York as a poet. Valencia feels like it’s doused in acid, or smeared with lighter fluid or spilt beer – something dirty, delectably unpredictable and ready to catch alight. Like Chelsea Girls, it captures the feeling of becoming a writer, being a dyke and the unpredictability of youth; that feeling of being at the eye of the storm, perhaps unaware that you are writing history, with each move setting the rhythm and direction of whatever unpredictable act comes next.
What is ‘Valencia’ about?
Leaving a toxic on-and-off ex in Tucson, Michelle Tea arrives in queer San Francisco. From the get-go, Valencia tosses its readers into the lion’s den of alcohol and drug-fuelled lesbian chaos, sex, messiness, debauchery, desire and the ultimate pursuit for love. Tea’s immediate and vivid writing style puts us at the heart of the drama, unflinchingly capturing a snapshot of dyke affairs. Everything, from the surrounding descriptions to how people talk to Tea’s inner monologue, is portrayed with remarkable vividness and clarity. You can almost smell the booze and feel it stick your shoes to the bar floor.
Gay revelry with a touch of Eve Babitz’ LA Woman, the Beats and punk dykes, Tea crystallises a moment in time. She highlights the intoxicating impact of falling in and out of love, lust or infatuation with equally uncontainable and troublesome dykes. Our protagonist bounces from bed to bathroom stall to break up with an eclectic and riotous string of women, barely making ends meet through sex work and other various jobs, and hardly holding one person in focus at a given time. It’s self-deprecating, humorous and tumultuous all at once, highlighting the highs and lows of joining the queer scene and what happens when the circus, or love, moves on or spits you out.
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What stands out about ‘Valencia’?
The novel weaves through visceral, hard-hitting truths observed keenly, from looking for love in all the wrong places to challenges within communities and wider society. As Maggie Nelson writes in the foreword, “Tea makes it look easy to write from the eye of the storm.” How did she do it, Maggie Nelson asks: ‘I’m willing to bet that this passage from Tea’s 2018 collection Against Memoir describes her process at the time pretty accurately: “I remember being inside a nightclub, sitting up on top of a jukebox, scribbling in my notebook by the light that escaped it.” Through Tea’s explicit, unflinching and incredibly vivid writing, we are immediately sat up on the jukebox there with her.
Valencia evokes Michelle’s pearls of wisdom in unexpected places. It cuts through vital topics that reflect the society it plays in, exploring queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work and more. It also offers an uncomfortable yet relatable blueprint for many who have tumultuously taken on the city dyke scene at such a primal age, striking a balance of community, identification and disconcerting reflection; that typical dykey coming-of-age time in one’s life of falling in ‘love’ with everyone you meet. The connections resonate across time and fashion, when Tea recalls, “I had big purple hair, a green studded collar, and roller skates. I looked insane.” Another clear observation: buzzcuts were prolific, perhaps as the modern mullet is now.
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A sneak peek into ‘Valencia’
Excerpt from Valencia by Michelle Tea
“She broke my heart, so now I have to write about her forever. It made everything different. It’s something that can only happen once.”
The verdict?
This vivid and explosive novel has firmly taken root in my mind. Initially, I wasn’t sure if it would resonate with me. I found myself questioning what story it would tell, whether it was another account masking euphoria through intoxication and harmful behaviours without much emotional substance. However, it achieved the opposite. It evoked memories of being 25; it evoked a feeling. The nostalgic memory or need for rebellion, discomfort and irritability at being in one place for too long, and the restlessness of not letting anything define you too much or too exactly, and how the ultimate yearn for love can steer us into all kinds of places and predicaments. Michelle Tea perfectly inscribes a personal moment in which we see ourselves and our community in all its multifaceted, warts-and-all electricity.
Star rating
You can grab your copy of Valencia here: Valencia a book by Michelle Tea – Bookshop.org UK. Curious for more book recs? Check out our 80+ queer books list.
Nonchalant x
