Gurba, Myriam. Mean. Coffee House Press, 2017.

Mean is a creative autobiography and true-crime narrative that follows Myriam Gurba from childhood to adulthood as she confronts rape, racism, cultural identity, and personal transformation. Haunted—literally and figuratively—by the ghost of Sophia, a raped and murdered woman, Myriam is compelled to visit the place where Sophia died. Through this haunting, she faces her own trauma and survivor’s guilt. Gurba’s voice is sharp, defiant, and self-aware, blending humor and horror in equal measure as she examines cruelty, injustice, and the survival mechanisms women develop to exist within them.

The title Mean becomes a lens through which Gurba explores power and pain. The book opens with Sophia’s death:

“Wrecking her makes him feel like she belongs to him” (2).

By beginning with this act of violence, Gurba forces readers to confront the brutality often silenced in stories of women—especially women of color. The murder of Sophia, a Spanish woman killed by a Hispanic man, mirrors Gurba’s own experience with sexual assault and raises questions of ownership, violence, and cultural complicity. Through this, Gurba links her trauma to a collective experience, a bridge between the living and the dead—between victimhood and survival.

When Gurba talks about being “mean,” she often invokes the cattiness of girlhood, but her real subject is cruelty in all its forms—social, racial, and systemic. The word “mean” becomes elastic, stretching from playground gossip to the most profound violations of humanity. She illustrates this concept through humor and absurdity, such as her discussion of the “Michael Jackson donut,” which sparks a debate about whether the pastry—half chocolate, half powdered sugar—is racist. Gurba observes:

“What I found most interesting was that everybody dominating this debate was white” (163).

Her point lands sharply: conversations about racism are often dominated by white voices, leaving people of color excluded from their own narratives. Gurba writes that the opinions of the two “mud people” in the room were never solicited—a darkly humorous yet devastating critique of white-centered discourse on race.

Another central motif in the book is the phrase “white girl,” which Gurba uses as both political and literary shorthand. It exposes the subtle hierarchies that shape American culture and classrooms:

“White girls from the English-only classes refused to socialize with girls from the bilingual classes” (19).

The term becomes layered—a symbol of privilege, separation, and the ways in which whiteness is normalized. Gurba’s repetition of “white girl” challenges readers to recognize how language itself can uphold systems of exclusion. She recalls moments of alienation and microaggression, from classmates to family acquaintances:

“‘What is this?’ in that supremely bitchy California-girl accent some white girls reserved for interrogating my mother’s hospitality” (19).

Through these moments, Gurba transforms “mean” from insult to insight—a way of naming the everyday cruelties that shape a person’s world.

As I read this novel, I found myself turning the question of “mean” inward. What does it mean to be “mean” as a woman, a survivor, a writer? Is meanness cruelty, or is it the courage to hold boundaries in a world that demands your silence? Gurba redefines the word as an act of reclamation: to be mean is to speak, to refuse apology, to survive.

In my own writing, I hope to evoke this same self-examination—to make readers question the norms we excuse, the systems we uphold, and the voices we choose to hear. Mean reminds me that storytelling is not just about empathy; it’s about confrontation. It’s about being brave enough to look directly at the discomfort—and to speak from it anyway.