Girlvert: A Review, with Apologies

My darlings, I am so sorry for being an absentee blogger! My life has been unendingly crazy for the past few weeks, and I have not had any time whatsoever for blogging! But I have had some time on subway and etc to think, so when I do get the time to sit down and write, watch out!

In the meantime, check out the review I did for WHACK! Magazine of Oriana Small/Ashley Blue's book, Girlvert: A Porno Memoir, now out from A Barnacle Book. If you're interested, like me, in issues in adult entertainment like obscenity, empowerment, consent, drug abuse, and health, this is a must-read from one of the most controversial porn stars of the 2000's.

A smidgen for you:

"But it wasn’t the shocking language, the joy of upsetting the strangers waiting for the 2 train with me, or even the lurid descriptions of fringe sexual acts that impressed me about Girlvert as much as it was its simple, unaffected, unforced honesty. Oriana/Ashley is obviously intelligent enough and has enough perspective on her own twisted story to write a deeply convincing book if she wants to. She could write a treatise on why porn is or isn’t degrading, what people should understand about the porn biz, why she regrets or doesn’t regret about her actions… Really, any weepy, whiny, convert-now fable with a moral at the end, using her massive life experiences as the media to paint almost any kind of picture she wants — but she doesn’t. She doesn’t argue one way or another, for or against any of the things she has done, the people she has encountered, the porn industry, its supporters, or its detractors. She simply tells the tale, never claiming to be an expert on anything except herself. She spends no time moralizing or telling her audience what to think, and that’s admirable. In a world where porn is constantly at the center of debates full of windbags on both sides trying to tell people what to think, and where most of us decline to use our brains at all when it comes to the sex industry, Ashley/Oriana refuses to do the thinking for her readers. She instead pulled off something I myself could never do — she just wrote a memoir, one so full of violence and paranoia and deep empathy toward her own younger, stupider, deeply troubled self in a wise, conflicted voice — and a totally honest one."

Check out the full review, leave comments (please? Oriana/Ashley will be reading them with interest, so now's your chance to ask her your questions!) and go buy the book! And stay tuned--an interview with Oriana/Ashley will follow shortly!