From the day she was born, Tama­ra Yajia entered the world on a wave of absur­di­ty. She was the newest mem­ber of a fam­i­ly no one would call nor­mal, from her grand­fa­ther the sala­mi obsessed pop­pers sales­man, to her moth­er, the Only­Fans mod­el. Not only will her fam­i­ly try any­thing once, like mov­ing to the Unit­ed States and open­ing a food stand named Sexy Chick­en; they’ll try any­thing mul­ti­ple times, like mov­ing back to Argenti­na, then back to the Unit­ed States, all while Tama­ra man­ages to achieve some suc­cess as a pre­teen child actress after a jaw-drop­ping per­for­mance where she strips down to a garter belt in front of a crowd of rab­bis.

The road does­n’t get eas­i­er for a twelve-year-old Argen­tin­ian Jew try­ing to make it big in Orange Coun­ty. The dis­ap­point­ment of giv­ing up her child­hood career as a per­former makes for a rather tumul­tuous com­ing of age. But through grit, hus­tle, and a series of cre­ative endeav­ors like join­ing a girl band, and per­form­ing her own one-woman show, Cum­ming of Age, Tam has made it through, and she’s ready to spill some shit-fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly.

Fea­tur­ing an unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of com­e­dy and tragedy, gen­er­a­tional strug­gle, and filthy sex jokes, Tama­ra Yaji­a’s debut mem­oir is the messy, blaz­ing sto­ry of a young Argen­tine try­ing to sur­vive while hold­ing on to her con­fi­dence, ambi­tion, and sense of humor.