Creep

Accusations and Confessions

By: Myriam Gurba

Narrated by: Myriam Gurba

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST * A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER

“Quite simply one of the best books of the decade.” —Los Angeles Review of Books * “The mother of intersectional Latinx identity.” —Cosmopolitan * “Brilliant…a hopeful book…rooted in the steadfast belief other worlds are possible.” —The New York Observer * “Witty, confident, and effortlessly provocative.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer * “The most fearless writer in America.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Good Night, Irene

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.

A creep can be a single figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it.

Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes.

With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from William Burroughs to her grandfather, from Joan Didion to her own abusive ex-partner; she takes aim at everything from public school administrations to the mainstream media, from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Weaving her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

Creep

There is so much in the voice of this book aside from being a Californian. It’s excellent.

So grateful

She is the kind of writer I have been hoping to come across. I look forward to reading and listening to all her work. What a gift. Thank you.

Well crafted collection of essays

Beautiful, painful, and incredibly potent. This was an excellent book and I love that it was read by the author.

(Should Have Been) Great

I really wanted to like this book, as the overall message is one we need more of - a testament against racism, misogyny, violence against women, gender-based prejudice, domestic violence, and more. However, the brilliant parts of it are overshadowed by a pervasive (writer’s) voice that is shrill and petulant. I kept having to remind myself the writer is over 40, as too much of her tone sounds like an adolescent’s. Her message would have been far more powerful had she maintained a mature outrage. She also undermines her outrage by her narration, adopting the persistent habit HRT (upspeak), in which she gives WAY too many of her declarative sentences the rising pitch of a question - an affectation of some women a decade or more younger than her - reinforcing a younger, less serious demeanor, rather than the moral outrage of a mature woman her story deserves. She would be a much better narrator of her own work if she could exorcise her remaining adolescent angst.