Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side Hardcover - 2013

Details

• Title Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side
• Author Rayya Elias
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 308
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Viking Books, New York
• Date 2013-04-04
• ISBN 9780670785162 / 0670785164
• Weight 1.1 lbs (0.50 kg)
• Dimensions 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 in (23.11 x 16.00 x 3.30 cm)
• Ages 18 to UP years
• Grade levels 13 - UP
• Library of Congress subjects Syrian Americans, Lesbians - New York (State) - New York
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2012027178
• Dewey Decimal Code B

 
Praise for Harley Loco

“[A] compulsively page-turning memoir…Haunting and mesmerizing, Elias’s story captures powerfully the vulnerability of being an outsider and the deep yearnings to be a part of something.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“First time author Elias, who has been clean since 1997, has enough distance to speak on her past unashamedly, with clear-eyed intelligence and without judging her younger self too harshly…strong stuff, with some truly amazing stories well told..”—Kirkus Reviews

"Rayya Elias's life reads like Huck Finn on heroin. Her story of fleeing Syria as a child,  growing up in Detroit and spending her young adulthood trolling around the East Village is as American as they come, including as it does immigration, addiction and hard won deliverance. Through it all Elias's voice burns fire hot and is completely engaging." —Darcey Steinke

“Rayya Elias's Harley Loco grabs you by the throat on the very first page, and then never stops shaking you -- even after you've closed the book. It's a punk song disguised as a memoir: raw, slashing, gritty, and shot through with all the wild confusion of youth. But it's also wise, unpredictable, and relentlessly affecting.” —Jonathan Miles

“Rayya Elias's twisted, devastating memoir of a life lived on the margins can take its rightful place alongside The Basketball Diaries, Please Kill Me and Just Kids as a classic, blood-stained love letter to bohemian NYC.” —Craig Marks

“Rayya Elias's recovery/coming out/East Village memoir brutally and honestly reminds us that replacing love with drugs keeps a woman a child. The redemption here is in her Syrian immigrant family. Their undying love and persistence remains her anchor and moves the reader to that place of transcendence that only unconditional love can create.” —Sarah Schulman

“Do any of us really know ourselves?  This kind of exploration into the human spirit is what true religion is about.” —Deborah Harry