Summer of George: Cringe Reading
July 15, 2007
Like most adolescent girls, my transition into womanhood, in all its tumult, is well-documented in journals, early zines and within the violent cross-hatch of hardbound sketchbooks. I took my writing very seriously as I did each individual emotion born of the marked confusion of this epoch. My 14 year-old mind, revelling in its new independence, gave distinctive intensity to all of my experiences. And out they poured from my pen: egocentric, alienated and naive. Like most adolescent girls.
Despite this universality, adolescense was a private humiliation for me. Peers somehow alienated me further. My thoughts were secrets; really, really, really deep secrets. 15 years or so later, those secrets made perfect material for Cringe Night, a monthly reading series in Brooklyn where vaults of adolescent poesy find new function: to entertain strangers.
Despite the therapuedic release and leap from my comfort zone involved in publically sharing my teen agnst, I got a mention on NPR’s Weekend Edition.