Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce

Every year the American Library Association, schools, publishers, libraries, and bookstores around the country year Banned Books Week to draw attention to censorship and challenges to freedom of speech. Every year hundreds of books are challenged by people who have (hopefully) good intentions but think that their good intentions outweigh others' ability to make decisions for themselves. Long before I ever worked in the book industry I must have had an inkling of my future; I wrote my freshman high school research paper on the issue of censorship even as my high school refused to teach I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Because this is Banned Books Week, I think it's appropriate to feature the most divisive book I've encountered in quite awhile, Merritt Tierce's debut novel Love Me Back. If it's not being challenged yet, wait a year.

I don't think it's possible to read Love Me Back and not react powerfully. Reviewers have described it as "raw," "blunt," "dark," "uncompromising." It's compulsive reading even when you don't want to follow where it's leading. Sometimes it hits too close to home. Often the book is harrowing. Divisive books, though, are the ones that push us to grow individually and as a society. I thought it was brilliant (and disturbing); I have colleagues whose opinions I value who were repelled.

Here's the deal: Love Me Back is the story of Marie, a waitress working through a series of restaurants in Texas until she lands at a high end steak house in Dallas. She's incredibly good at her job, mechanically serving celebrities and businessmen and sports stars each night. She's also a girl (and I deliberately use "girl" instead of "woman" because Marie seems emotionally stuck after events derailed her college plans) with demons and prone to dangerous behaviors.

Merritt Tierce

In scattered chapters throughout the book, we discover Marie's back story. A good Christian girl growing up in a good Christian home, she participates in a youth mission trip to Mexico. While there, she sleeps with a boy on the trip, and--let's just assume she received the Texas school sex ed--she becomes pregnant. Instead of going to college and fulfilling the track of good white girls from good Texas church-going families, she stays home, marries the boy even though she barely knows him, and has a baby. She's set adrift by the abrupt turn her life has taken and, unable to right the ship, she accepts the restaurant culture of booze, drugs, and sex. Marie is a fractured person, but she still manages to function enough to keep from either breaking down completely or finding help.

Merritt Tierce was named as one of the 5 Under 35 authors to watch, a big deal in the publishing world because it signals that here is a new voice that will challenge readers and the state of books. It's like being named ESPN's #1 high school football recruit with the expectation that the player will become the next Peyton Manning. This recognition will guarantee that critics take Merritt Tierce seriously. She's talented. She deserves that respect. However, what more impresses me is that she is a talented woman who's written a fairly autobiographical novel that challenges a ton of the controversial topics that mostly people attempt to ignore, particularly in the mannered South and Texas.

Photo credit: Getty Images

What is Marie's story if she lived in a place with easy access to birth control and accurate sex ed? What is her story if she lived in a place where sinners aren't shamed and condemned? I think Love Me Back digs in and addresses those questions in a way that hasn't been attempted in a long time. Marie reminded me of girls I knew in high school, girls I knew in college, the women I worked with at almost minimum wage after I graduated and didn't have a career trajectory and felt lost myself. Are there really so many steps from my life now as a moderately successful woman with a house and a cat and a pretty good job and a handful of amazing friends and the Liz that could have been? I worked a crappy restaurant job one summer (fast food, Sonic carhop, no roller skates), and apart from the high school girls working part time for gas money, my coworkers were women in their 50's who'd each had numerous marriages and multiple kids in and out of wedlock and their daughters were then pregnant with their first babies and you could look at them and wonder what they'd dreamed about doing when they were good kids in high school.

Love Me Back is a restaurant book. Merritt Tierce actually worked in the Olive Garden in Abilene where Gianna once locked my keys in the car. Fans of Kitchen Confidential will recognize types like the managers and owners and cooks and wait staff. Love Me Back is a Texas book, rooted in the traditional values of religion and shame. Love Me Back is a feminist book that doesn't flinch from the label. Love Me Back is the kind of book that censors love to hate. Love Me Back is powerful, compulsive, obsessive reading that dares you to flinch. Is this a book that everyone will like? God, I hope not. I think it pushes buttons that need to be pushed and that's going to upset a lot of people. But Love Me Back is also a book I champion. I want it to upset people. Maybe upset people will see the invisible Maries of the world and question how they came to be.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 21

I don’t know how I came across Grace Paley; maybe she was included in a short story anthology, or maybe I came across one of her essays in a Women’s Studies class (I will give you a minute to get over your shock that I took a women’s studies class…take your time).  However I came to know her work, I consider myself truly lucky.

Where can we can this hat?

Occasionally you come across lists of books that women or young women should read.  I don’t ever recall seeing Grace Paley on those lists, which is a travesty. Not only should she be on the list, she should be in the top five. The best way I can describe her, especially her essays (although some of her stories are semi autobiographical), is that she teaches you how to be a better, or maybe the word is, complete, a more complete person.

Paley is compassionate, thoughtful, and wise.  She was a feminist, an anti war activist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. I met her once at the Miami Book Festival; I don’t know for sure but she must have been in her 70’s at the time. She was a very tiny woman but sort of fierce looking, like she knew things. Anyway, she signed my books and I told her what her work meant to me, she stood up and hugged me.

Basically this entire blog is so I can brag and say I once hugged Grace Paley and it was a highlight of my life.

I will recommend two books that will be a good introduction to Paley. First, The Collected Stories. For me this collection is a bible of sorts, it combines her three volumes of stories into one book.  Not that you’re the type to be impressed by these things, but this collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer and National Book Award.

The second book you should have will you give you a sense of who Grace Paley was as a person, as a humanist. Just as I Thought collects her essays, articles, and some talks she gave over the years (she was one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever seen).

Grace Paley in Miami

One last note: I thought of Grace Paley today after reading about the devastating tornado damage in Oklahoma. When things like this happen, the danger is that it can paralyze you, make you feel useless or powerless. You resort to just shaking your head. For me, Paley is a writer who I go to for solace, for direction, and for inspiration. She was an activist in every sense of the word.  Every day was a call to action for her; just knowing that inspires me to be a better person, to be an activist.  

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 26

This may shock most of you, but Liz and I are feminists. Big time. Troublemakers, even.  We know our women’s history and are smart enough to recognize when to suspend business as usual in order to say thank you to a fallen comrade, a feminist in arms, a soldier in the fight, a righteous woman, a badass who made it easier for women like us who wanted to have careers once dominated by men. 

1972

If you are unfamiliar with Ms. Thom (get it, Ms…? Ms.??) I highly recommend Ms. 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement. The book is her first person account of the early days of Ms. Magazine (now you get it, right?).  She offers the inside scoop on inception meetings before Ms. was launched, boots on the ground reporting on the feminist movement, and interviews with other Ms. founders such as Gloria Steinem, Suzanne Levine, and Patricia Carbine. I am almost certain this book is now out of print, but buy a used copy. Now that I think of it, this book is a perfect example of our month long quest to find good and cheap books. See, it all comes together. 

Thank you, Mary Thom, and if there is a place beyond may it be forever motorcycle weather. Ride on. 

motorcycle enthusiast and
general badass.