How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea
How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea Plume, 2015 ISBN: 978-0142181195 287 p.p.
What does it mean to “grow up”? For millennials, this question is particularly loaded. The recent recession has delayed many of the traditional markers of adulthood—financial independence, home ownership, marriage and having kids—rendering the notion of “growing up” more nebulous than ever. While Michelle Tea, now 37, “grew up” in a somewhat earlier era, her rocky journey towards adulthood is incredibly relatable. Whether you are a struggling millennial or someone for whom growing up was/is difficult for other reasons, How to Grow Up is sure to strike a common chord.
Tea tells her story through a collection of essays, each one shedding light on some key aspect of her life. Though her essay titles are often a bit corny for my taste—"Ask Not for Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls" and "Getting Pregnant with Michelle Tea" are notable examples—her essays come together to form a compelling whole, one that is as idiosyncratic and rough around the edges as the woman who wrote them. Through explorations of her romantic relationships, her love for fashion, her relationship to food and exercise, we learn both the details of her life and the lessons she has learned.
During childhood and adolescence, Tea lived in a working class Boston home. There, financial scarcity shaped her troubled relationship with money but also provided her with a grittiness that would come to serve her well in her twenties and thirties which she spent in squalid communal houses. “Where I come from,” she explains, “toughness is prized more than cleanliness, much closer to godliness, if your god was a rough motherfucker. I felt a crooked pride; I was superior to folks whose privileged lives would see to it that they never had to figure out how to cohabit with cockroaches.”
However, she eventually realized that she wanted more in her life, that it was time to establish a more stable home and lifestyle: “But I wasn’t that person anymore. Sure, I was proud of who I was in the world and I embraced every single little messed-up circumstance that shaped me. But I didn’t think it meant what I used to think it meant—that I was somehow better than anyone, that it built character.”
As Tea grew older, she decided to leave behind the things she felt she had outgrown, including, most notably, her substance use. Leaving behind alcohol, Tea finds solace and rejuvenation in healthier habits and relationships. She trades in cohabitation with a teenager with a healthy relationship and Velveeta for healthy meals shared with her partner Dashiell. For Tea, the two go together: “I truly believe that when you start a revolution in one area of your life, prioritizing true health and well-being that excellent intention spreads to other areas of your life… You start to spoil yourself with the better things in life—non-dysfunctional love affairs, French cheese—and suddenly the two-bit Romeos and their Velveeta equivalents just don’t cut it anymore.”
Honest and raw, Tea tackles alcoholism, Buddhism, relationships, and alternative fashion in the same refreshingly honest voice. Reading How to Grow Up was a vicarious adventure through Tea’s meandering path to adulthood, one that strikes an unforgettable balance of humor, drama, and insight.
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Michelle Tea is the author of four memoirs, one novel, a collection of poetry, and a young adult fantasy series. She is the creator and editor of Muthamagazine.com, and she blogs regularly about her attempts to get pregnant at "Getting Pregnant with Michelle Tea" on xoJane.com. She is founder and artistic director of RADAR Productions, a literary organization that produces monthly reading series, the international Sister Spit performance tour, the Sister Spit Books imprint on City Lights, and other events.
Photo credits:
Author photo courtesy of East Bay Express
Feature photo courtessy of Elle.com
