Born in Syria, raised in Detroit, then the Lower East Side as a hairdresser and musician, with heroin and prison running through the middle of it.
The hairdressing is the spine, which is a stranger and better choice than it sounds. It is the skill that keeps surviving every collapse, the thing she can always go back to, and the book keeps returning to the chair as the one place the chaos stops.
Unsentimental about the addiction. No redemption framing, no lesson attached.
Read July 2018.