Readings, Rated
Revisiting Weetzie Bat
Over at Jezebel, Emily Gould re-reads a YA fave, Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, a book (and series of books) beloved by many, but which I totally missed out on. I keep meaning to remedy that.
In the Weetzie Bat books, the jacaranda is always in bloom, and every character is forever going to the beach to drink pink champagne and eat something with avocados in it. Also, the books are about a teenage girl with a bleached-blond flat top named Weetzie who lives with her gay best friend Dirk and his boyfriend Duck, who sleep with her so she can have a baby named Cherokee because the love of her life, whose name is My Secret Agent Lover man, doesn’t want a child, but everything works out okay and they end up all raising the baby together. Can you believe that, in 1989, someone had the audacity to publish Weetzie Bat as a book for teenagers?