Getting Off, the debut book by the 35-year-old Mexican-American essayist Erica Garza, is comparably affecting. The memoir shines light on the lonely (albeit impressively multi-orgasmic) world of a woman who binges not on food or pills, but on hookups and 'getting off' ...her prose is appealingly no-frills and accessible. She writes in the style of one who knows better than to linger too long on the eroticism of her memories — one who has learned the hard way how crucial it is to keep dangerous rushes of euphoric recall in check ... As a narrator, Garza is a master of identifying such dark, postcoital feelings as these ... We’ve all been there, and in reading Garza’s insight into her own experiences, we better understand ourselves ... But the strong final chapters, sublimely set in Southeast Asia, are both inspirational and, dare I say it, still pretty kinky. God bless a lost person who has found her way. Thanks for sharing, Erica.
Erica Garza’s Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction is like Belle de Jour if Séverine was a real woman writing in the 21st century and exploring her desires before she even had the chance to become a bored housewife ... Rather, the compelling part of Garza’s story is that recovery entails the acceptance of her libido and refusal of shame. In a world that still fears female sexuality and buys into the dichotomy of the Madonna-whore complex, Getting Off is doing crucial work ... Garza is admirably bold, laying everything bare via her chosen genre ... Though Garza writes through the lens of addiction and recovery, the conclusions she draws feel a bit too simple at times. What about women who look at hardcore porn and have strong feelings of self-worth? Garza doesn’t explore this question and it isn’t part of her journey... If we care about the sexual health of our young people, we might encourage them to read Getting Off.
Getting Off could have been a tighter memoir had Garza not strayed from the main focus, writing of her obsession with body hair and that time she was in a pageant. And it may sound strange, but the details about porn weren’t as interesting as her emotions ... Big picture? Getting Off does what successful memoirs are supposed to do–puts us in another person’s shoes and allows us to take away real solutions that could help our problems–even if our lives are not similar to hers.
In an era when predatory male sexual behavior has finally become a topic of urgent national discourse — I personally consider it a public-health issue! — Erica Garza’s Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction makes for a wild, timely read ... The common thread was Garza’s compulsive need to feel sexual humiliation and shame, and her destructive quest took her from California to Italy and New York City, to London and Hawaii, Thailand and Bali ... Garza eventually got the real help she needed, immersing herself in a mix of Eastern and Western religious and therapeutic practices and meeting a man she was ready to honestly share herself with.
It’s not surprising that there’s an appetite for Garza’s memoir. It may be 2018, but there remains a lot of secrecy and shame around female sexuality ... Garza hopes her memoir will educate people about the nature and prevalence of sex addiction ... Her intention with the book, she stresses, isn’t to 'promote censorship or demonize the porn industry. I think that people can use porn in a healthy way.' Rather she wants to help break down the shame that still shrouds female sexuality ... But while Garza may intend for her memoir to promote a more complex view of female sexuality and desire, I wonder if might end up doing just the opposite ... Garza always knew her story risked getting sensationalized and simplified. Still, she says, she has been disappointed by how reductive some of the coverage has been.
In her first book, a memoir entitled Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, Garza frankly and unflinchingly chronicles these experiences. In pursuit of sex, she writes, she often found herself destroying relationships with those who cared about her — not just romantic partners who actually treated her well, but friends, family, and even herself ... Garza’s memoir is the rare sex addiction narrative from a female perspective, and a profoundly genuine, gripping story that any reader can appreciate.
But because this tell-all is written by a woman, it has an entirely different point of reference. And writer Erica Garza was not only addicted to your run of the mill threesome and lesbian porn ... Garza attributes her sex addiction to her lack of self-worth and her sex adventures are sometimes so brutal you want to yell at her to just stop! ... What makes the book tick is that Garza’s ability and talent as a storyteller. She’s a well-known essayist on this subject, and she is able to mine the depths of magic and mystery that makes sex what it is ... As Garza struggles with her addiction and psyche, the reader is firmly in her corner because she is painfully open and vulnerable. This memoir succeeds as the best memoirs do.
For those of us whose understanding of sex addiction is relegated to a vague malady celebrities blame when they’re caught with the nanny, Garza offers a sobering antidote ...This confessional memoir is peppered with statistics about porn use and sex addiction, and Garza’s pull-no punches style will twinge the sympathies of even the most prudish.”
Essayist Garza’s memoir begins in bed, where she is having sex with a man she neither knows well nor particularly cares for. This scene sets the tone for a narrative that never deviates from its intent to educate and engross readers with the random sexual escapades and private pains of a woman at the mercy of her addiction ... Though exquisitely visceral and written with genuine emotion, the author’s fascinating odyssey ends too abruptly, lacking some of the curative details readers will be expecting ... A provocative sojourn through the wilderness of sexual addiction.
Garza explores her history of sex addiction, its causes, and her attempts to overcome it in her unflinching debut. Readers follow her through her early childhood; her lonely, insecure teenage years; and into adulthood as she moves across the country and around the world, led by one terrible relationship after another. Garza recounts her sexual experiences in evocative detail... While Garza provides an honest voice to sufferers of sex addiction, the book often veers into diarylike territory, feeling less like an empowering missive than a public confession of sexual misadventures. Still, Garza’s blunt descriptions of addiction and addictive behavior will interest anyone who has suffered from similar afflictions.
