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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Female Ejaculating Bisexual Quakers Unite, 13 Oct 1998
By A Customer
This book is a different experience from the start. The paper is similar to grocery bags, the typeface wavers on the line, and almost every page is decorated with rubber stamp art, doodles, and calligraphy. But there's an intriguing story here, too, not just a fancy presentation. Tomato Rodriguez sets off on a motorcycle she can barely ride, as a motorcycle gang of one (the Flaming Iguanas), to cross the country and reunite with her ailing father, who runs a sex toy shop with his girlfriend. Lopez definitely stands many of the conventions of the male road novel on their heads. When I tried to guess how things would end up, I was rarely successful, and I like that in a book. Still, I thought there were places that she abandoned a character or a plot line just as it was starting to bear fruit. Lopez implies that the book is semi-autobiographical, and it's hard to know whether it's the "truer" parts are the places where the plot veers as awkwardly as Tomato steering on gravel. The strength of this book is its characterization. There are no strong male characters in this book, but they are not uniformly disgusting or stereotypical, a fault some feminist authors fall into. The portrait of her therapy-overdosed, boundary-obssessed lesbian mom is wonderful ("I imagined all of us protected by invisible squares of masking tape on the floor that followed us wherever we walked like hoop skirts, and if anyone crossed over into our space we were allowed to shoot to kill, the way you can when burglars break into your house.") Let me leave you with the quote that will, I believe, provide the ultimate litmus test as to whether this book is for you: "I wanted a Bisexual Female Ejaculating Quaker role model. And where was she, dammit? From now on I would demand to be represented." Go on. Ride on the wild side.
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