Blood and Guts in High School [Paperback]

A masterpiece of surrealist fiction, steeped in controversy upon its first publication in 1984,Blood and Guts in High Schoolis the book that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism. With 2017 marking the 70th anniversary of her birth, as well as the 10th year since her death this transgressive work of philosophical, political, and sexual insightwith a new introduction by Chris Krauscontinues to become more relevant than ever before.

In the Mexican city of Merida, ten-year-old Janey lives with Johnnyher boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and fatheruntil he leaves her for another woman. Bereft, Janey travels to New York City, plunging into an underworld of gangs and prostitution. After escaping imprisonment, she flees to Tangiers where she meets Jean Genet, and they begin a torrid affair that will lead Janey to her demise. Fantastical, sensual, and fearlessly radical, this hallucinatory collage is both a comic and tragic portrait of erotic awakening.

Kathy Acker(1948  1997) was an influential postmodernist writer and performance artist, whose many books includeGreat Expectations; Don Quixote; Literal Madness; Empire of the Senseless; In Memoriam to Identity; My Mother: Demonology; Pussy, King of the Pirates; Portrait of an Eye;andRip-Off Red, Girl Detective.

Blood and Guts in High Schoolsaved my life . . . this novel was the central most articulate and precise piece of literature I read during the decade in which I most wanted to kill myself . . . The girl in this story had more agency and voice than any girl Id ever read or would read in my entire life. Lydia Yuknavitch

Kathy Ackers writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame. Acker is a landmark writer. Jeanette Winterson

No writer I know is more audacious than Kathy Acker, whose anarchic wit drivesl³$