18th
This book just made my must-read list
rkb:
From “Mary, Queen of Arkansas” by Diana Joseph (part of her memoir I’m Sorry You Feel That Way) - read a longer excerpt on her blog:
At age fourteen, what I wanted to be most of all was applauded, and if that wasn’t possible, I wanted to be a girl in a Bruce Springsteen song. A Jersey girl. A girl named Sandy or Wendy or Candy or Cindy or Sherry, Rosalita or Crazy Janie or Mary, Queen of Arkansas. A girl idolized by an intense and poetic man who had curly dark hair and brooding dark eyes and who wore a clean white tee-shirt every day. I spent hours in my bedroom, kneeling as if in supplication before my Emerson stereo fully equipped with AM/FM radio, cassette player, and turntable. I played the warped and scratchy Springsteen albums I bought at a garage sale.
