Shoshana von Blanckensee

Emma Cline's THE GUEST meets Haley Jakobson’s OLD ENOUGH in this vibrant and intoxicating queer Jewish coming-of-age debut, set in 1990s San Francisco, about a young woman who finds herself torn between her fraught relationships with her childhood best friend and first love, and with an older lesbian she works for.
It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends), Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people. Even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.
But when the financial strains of West Coast living push the girls to start stripping at The Chez Paree—yet another secret Hannah must keep from her family—Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants her at the club, but Hannah hates stripping nearly as much as she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is immediately taken with Hannah. And Hannah too is intrigued by Chris—her attention, her messiness, her pain—and the chance to escape the leering men at The Chez Paree. Desperate to stay in San Francisco, but away from the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement with Chris.
As Hannah falls deeper into Chris’ world and Sam starts to meet new queer friends, a rift forms between them. Without Sam, who is Hannah? And what becomes of San Francisco to Hannah alone—a space rich with queer possibility, or an intimidating, unfamiliar place, just as lonely as the one she’d left behind? An achingly tender and resonant story of survival, first love, and growing up queer in the ’90s, Girls Girls Girls is a piercing exploration of the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home.

Girls Girls Girls

Lindsay

I thought I'd feel guilty and awful stripping, but mostly I feel guilty and awful for not feeling guilty and awful enough. I feel relieved, bordering on proud. Proud of what I'm not doing - not on a plane heading back to Long Beach with my tail between my legs.

I know he's trying to tell us he loves them, but all I hear is an old man trying to dictate what his fully grown daughters can and can't do. Is love really love if you're squeezed in a tight fist? Maybe he doesn't know how it makes you twist and turn, desperate for a far away place to call home. A place where love isn't a hook in the lip.

To me isn't the sex part that matters. It's the part where we laugh about how we're in a special club, one that the rest of the world could never understand, could never love, would never write about in their dumb books. But we know about us, and we can love us, and we will write about us, even if it's just in our journals or on the back of a sweatshirt. Maybe when you aren't alone in your queerness, queerness is thicker than water. I want to be part of that "we" so badly I can hardly make eye contact with anyone in here.

Why do I care so much about a girl I don't even know? But it doesn't really matter why. I do. I can't help it. I care about a lot of things, even when I try not to.

I need just 1 person to know me all the way, to know every unsavory detail and love me anyway. Just one. Love me anyway.

Just… you know how you get used to being closeted, and then other shit ends up in there too? And then, at a certain point, you don't know what to keep in there and what to take out.

Girls Girls Girls quotes

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