Myriam Gurba

Myriam Gurba is the editor-in-chief of Tasteful Rude. She is also the author of the memoir Mean, a New York Times editors’ choice. O, the Oprah Magazine, ranked Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time and Publishers’ Weekly describes Gurba as having a voice like no other. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Paris Review, TIME.com, and the Believer. Gurba has been known to call shitty writers pendejas and has no qualms about it. Along with Roberto Lovato and David Bowles, she co-founded Dignidad Literaria, a grassroots literary organization that seeks to revolutionize publishing.

She’s Your Dyke Aunty

by and | March 25, 2021

I make pilgrimages and I drove to Palm Springs, a town haunted by Truman Capote’s ghost. Photo essay and words.

White Tank Top

Writing Ourselves Into Bed

by | March 15, 2021

When battered women "move on," sometimes, we "start over" in a new home that's, in many ways, a reconstitution of our old home. We might not be sharing walls or a roof with the piece of shit who fucked us up but the weapons he used remain. Weapons like a bed. They don't look like weapons. They look like ordinary things. That's what's so frightening about them.

Arcelia

“There Are No Pol(ICE) in the Future” and Other Prophetic Declarations from Alán Pelaez Lopez

by | March 2, 2021

"A queer Black future is a future that allows me to envision a better reality for Black people everywhere…it is also a future that reckons with all the violence and retaliation that we will experience to get to that future. I also think that the future is now"

Alán Pelaez Lopez & Ariana Brown

Framing Britney Spears Deepened My Desire for Justin Timberlake to Eat a Bag of Dicks

by | February 11, 2021

No daughter should live in terror of her dad and prolonged fear of a caregiver, especially a masculine one, indicates that someone may be experiencing coercive control, an ongoing form of gendered oppression characterized by a combination of conditions which are documented by Framing Britney Spears.

Jamie and Britney Spears

Sandwich Expert David Brooks Weighs In On the Education of Black and Brown Children

by | February 2, 2021

Elitist sandwich expert and NYTimes columnist David Brooks writes that the desire of public school teachers not to die of covid is a disaster for children. Myriam Gurba disagrees.

Don’t Call Me Resilient

by | January 14, 2021

Using the word "brave" exalts certain traumatized people as heroic and casts others as failures. All victims of assault deserve to have their experiences dignified with validation, not just those who earn it through "bravery."

AOC / instagram live

Fascism Goes to School

by | January 12, 2021

The classroom is where many white women may mimic the power of a strongman and the power asymmetry widens when a white teacher is placed in charge of a racially minoritized class of students.

Benito Mussolini

féi hernandez – Con Y Del Corazón

by | January 7, 2021

féi hernandez writes poetry con y del corazón. Their new collection, Hood Criatura, tells emotionally intimate stories crafted in imagistic Spanglish.

Féi Hernandez

Hilaria Baldwin & the Perverse Myth of Reverse Body-Shaming

by | December 31, 2020

Eating while beautiful isn't heroic. Neither is rubbing glitter into your butt's stretchmarks: Myriam Gurba on the weaponization of body positivity by Hilaria Baldwin and others.

Hilaria Baldwin - Shutterstock

Lingerie Stanifesto

by | December 22, 2020

Sometimes, it sucks to be a body. Other times, it’s fun. Lingerie is one of those gifts that makes being a body fun. Putting it on is to swaddle yourself in ribbons, bows and straps that speak on your behalf. They assert, “Bitch, I’M the gift, a gift to MYSALF.”

Brontez Purnell & The Occupational Hazards of Sex

by | December 17, 2020

A Conversation with Writer, Musician, Dancer, Filmmaker, Performance Artist and Legend Brontez Purnell: "My dad would always try to make me go fishing and there was a time a couple of years ago where I really wrestled with the idea of writing the erotic adventures of Huckleberry Finn... Scott O’Hara clued into my writing when I was younger. There's a picture of him where he has this huge hard-on and a skateboard or whatever. I read his memoir when I was 18 or 19 and the writing was like, “And then he separated my glistening cheeks and I achieved nine orgasms.”

Brontez sunflowers

A Letter from the Editor

by | December 11, 2020

One of the things I fantasized about was growing tall. My family does produce statuesque Mexicans so I believed that this goal was attainable. As a result of early childhood caffeination, I topped out at five feet. Tasteful Rude, however, is the manifestation of another early dream.

Myriam Gurba in Tijuana

A Nation of Kevins: Home Alone Again…and Again

by | December 11, 2020

We’re revisiting some of the work we first published. In a “Nation of Kevins,” Myriam Gurba discusses why Home Alone is the perfect emblem for the USian response to the pandemic. It also instructs us as to why we ought to defund the police. Plus, it's about Christmas.

Christmas at the Laundromat

Myriam Gurba Speaks to Feminist Giant Mona Eltahawy About Revolution

by | September 9, 2020

In the same way that I believe the protests must riot and must loot and must burn shit down, I believe we have a right to defend ourselves. Not just to defend ourselves, I believe we have a right to riot and loot and burn shit down when it comes to these fucking fascist predatory fucks who are in home and on the street.