The Denim Diaries: A Memoir

by Laurie Boyle Crompton

Overview

Laurie Boyle Crompton’s coming of age in rural Pennsylvania and the New York City area in the 1970s and 1980s was anything but idyllic. In moving verse accompanied by diary-esque sketches, Crompton takes you along as she navigates relationships, plays the happy family at church despite discord at home, manages her mother’s ambitions and her father’s alcoholism, struggles with her self-image, and desperately tries to fit in at school by squeezing into too-tight designer denim.

Both heartwarming and heartbreaking, The Denim Diaries follows Crompton’s journey through disordered eating and sexual assault to acceptance and recovery. Her vivid poems recall the highs and lows of a life filled with hardship and joy alike. At times both harrowing and humorous, this memoir brings new perspective to the importance of self-love and finding hope in the darkest of times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798765604885
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	650,333
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	14 - 15 Years

About the Author

Laurie Boyle Crompton is the author of many young adult novels including Pretty in Punxsutawney (2019), Freaky in Fresno (2020), The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High (2014) and Love and Vandalism (2017). After moving to New York she began creating activist artwork promoting body love and built the popular website Dreamer-girl.com, an anti-starvation imagery site that attracted nearly one thousand unique visitors each week for four years at its height. She graduated from St. John's University with a BA in English and Journalism, and has written for national magazines like Glamour and Allure, survived a teaching stint at an all-boy high school, and appeared on Good Day New York several times as a Toy Expert. After having lived in Orlando and England, Laurie has made her home in New York with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

"Crompton's free verse gives readers a powerful view of her inner self-loathing until she learns to accept herself as she is. At times, this is a tough read, but Crompton's candidly honest story will resonate with anyone struggling with self-image issues and difficult family relationships." — starred, Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2023-09-09
An honest, brutal memoir told through poems and line-art illustrations about surviving trauma and disordered eating and deciding to truly live.

In 1968, the author’s grandfather wanted her teenaged mother to have an abortion. Instead, her mom called off “the contract hit” and married her 20-year-old boyfriend. Dad drank too much, Mom made the best of things, and two younger siblings came along. Laurie, who reads white, loved being a big sister but was the “weird girl” who didn’t fit in. Slowly, she learned from family, friends, and the media that she was “too much / too big / too earnest / too intense-in-your-face,” and she began to dislike herself. Caring for siblings while Mom worked and Dad drank, Laurie tried to be an ordinary 1980s teenager, but she felt like an imposter. Struggling to maintain control amid divorce and loneliness, she convinced herself that losing weight would fix everything. Thus began her journey to anorexia and bulimia. When Laurie left community college to move to New York City, her relationship with food and her body worsened as she also grappled with surviving sexual assault. Eventually, she realized she’d die if she didn’t learn to love herself enough to live. This memoir, enhanced by the author’s sketches, is both original and moving—but not for the faint of heart. In often graphic detail, beautiful turns of phrase quickly become hard-cornered truths, providing a poetic roadmap from self-doubt to self-hate and, finally, self-acceptance.

Relatable, visceral, and memorable. (author’s note, resources) (Verse memoir. 16-adult)

Kirkus Reviews