Rent Girl

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 side story to Tea's other novels, this book explores in depth her ambivalence to the sex industry, which she found to be an exciting outlaw occupation one minute and a traumatic existential nightmare the next. She cleverly avoids the stereotypes of victim or suprehero. Illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin; two-color art throughout. "I dealt with a lot of prostitutes when I was young... I always felt like a commodity in reverse, like a sucker. When I experienced the joy of reading Rent Girl that old feeling of physical indifference came back." -Robert Williams