Valencia

by Michelle Tea

Book Overview

An anarchic and unflinching cult novel "charged with reflection, anger, and the feeling of being alive" (Village Voice), tracing a year of love and lust in San Francisco's lesbian underground, with a new foreword by Maggie Nelson

Valencia is a fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the dyke world of 1990s San Francisco.

Fleeing Tucson and her rotten (ex) girlfriend, Michelle lands in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1541606779
• ISBN13: 9781541606777
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: Seal Press (CA)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

I absolutely loved this book!

I think where people go wrong reading books like this is that they want the protagonist to be a decent person who says, does, and thinks decent things. The narrator in Valencia is a terrible, disgustingly miserable person… but that’s why it’s enjoyable to read. Human flaw shows itself within these pages with vehemence and freedom. This book is entertaining but most assuredly does not have any sense of a plot. It reads more like a diary. Full of regret and longing for something that can never exist. Instead of plot, there is manic momentum that propels the main character through her many obsessions/lovers. Valencia is stylistically chaotic. If you believe in the classist conformity of grammar, this may bother you. But I feel like this added to the chaotic vernacular of the novel. Overall, such a fun read.

couldn't put it down!

wow, what can i say about valencia, except that i could not put this book down! it was amazing. personally, i have a very short attention span when it comes to books, but michelle tea, has this way of always keeping me on my toes. i still cant decide if i liked this better than her first book or not. lets just say they were the two best books i've ever read.

i should have quit my job to follow michelle tea

the imaginative, lyrical and sensual motion in this "confessional" novel can only be attributed to a liver and lover. those who do not connect with this book in one way or another have not connected with much; the survival sensibility contained in this book transcends that contained in most. The raw lines, extracted involuntarily by a reader like me who was, prior to her reading, vying for something more tangible in books written by 20-something lesbians with something to say, emerge as an "every-woman's" inner-monologue, one that most might be afraid to admit to.

Hilariously gritty

Michelle Tea's second book is just as good as her first. With Valencia, you get the feeling that Tea has more of a handle on her identity, but not so much that she takes herself too seriously. This book is made hysterical through Tea's amazingly detailed descriptions of sights, sounds, and experiences; frequently throughout reading it, i'd burst out laughing while simultaneously thinking, "so true, so true." This is a quick read, cuz you can't put it down. Not for the weak at heart! Tea's talent for description heeds no boundaries and jaunts frequently into the realm of sex. This book makes me want to write, write, write about all those idiosyncratic habits and foibles of me and my friends.