The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel

Written by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Narrated by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

A vibrant and absorbing novel of six friends--each an unforgettable Latina in her late twenties--and the complications and triumphs in their lives

As soon as it was written, The Dirty Girls Social Club began turning heads. The Chicago Tribune reported that the book "set off a bidding frenzy" among publishers. The Associated Press reported that "even people running the copy machines at major publishing houses just had to read The Dirty Girls Social Club."

It's no wonder the media is all in a whirl. In this heartfelt and absorbing novel, Valdes-Rodriguez opens up the lives of six upwardly mobile Latina friends in their late 20's. These women, who come from widely varied backgrounds, meet at Boston University and, after graduating, reunite every six months to share their stories. Facing the complications and pressures of everyday lives, the Social Club offers a chance to meet regularly, dish, dine, and help each other over the bumpy course of life and love.

Filled with humor, drama, and the redemptive power of friendship, The Dirty Girls Social Club promises to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: May 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781593973063

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and a former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. With more than one million books in print in eleven languages, she was included on Time magazine’s list of "25 Most Influential Hispanics," and was a Latina magazine Woman of the Year as well as an Entertainment Weekly Breakout Literary Star. She is the author of many novels, including Playing with Boys and The Husband Habit. Alisa divides her time between New Mexico and Los Angeles.

Reviews for The Dirty Girls Social Club

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A Latina [Waiting to Exhale]. I enjoyed the book and the author shows promise. I think it may have been better with one fewer character, so that the author could expound more on the remaining women's problems.

[Milagro I. Salamanca · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is perfect for a beach read. Loved it! It was funny at times, sad at times. Overall, a great book.

[cnx speaks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great storyline.. a little fantastical but so many great themes!!!!

[eas7788 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very mixed. At times has great energy. Concept is wonderful but not every character is equally strong. Great job getting across the idea of multiplicity of Latina identities. A fair amount of chichés. A few narrative dead-ends. Also quite a bit of offensive ideas and language. Much was "okay" when written but still seems awfully tone-deaf.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining and enjoyable read about a group of friends navigating romantic struggles and professional problems while also dealing with varying Latina roots.

I do hope in the republication of the book, Ms. Valdes asked for the pejorative r-word to be excised. It felt jarring in an otherwise timeless-feeling novel.

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book but when it finished I realized that I wanted more but it wasn't because I was so enchanted by these women and their lives, it was because Valdes-Rodriguez tried to do too much and just didn't have the room for it.

Each chapter is told from the pov of a different sucia. That device should have given the reader more insight into the world these women inhabit but it actually served to further separate them as it frequently talked about the lives they lead away from each other. Now, I liked all six women to varying degrees but I didn't get enough of them in the way I wanted. Less women would have worked better, maybe, because then the story would have been able to be more balanced.

Don't get me wrong, I liked this book a lot. I like the characters, I like their lives and their choices, I like their friendships. I also really liked the social issues that were a natural part of this book. Nothing was presented as if I was being lectured, but nothing was glossed over and made to be okay, either. There are things all these women have to deal with that come from being Latina and that's just the way it is. It was nice to read something that approached these issues honestly.

The book takes place in Boston which, to be honest, was why I bought it. I've read criticisms of the book that say it presents Boston as less liberal than it is, and I think those criticisms are wrong. Yeah, sure, we're liberal, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems, because there are, and what these women run into seemed very appropriate to me.

[lisa.johnson.james · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I chose this for an entertaining summer read to give myself a break from the heavier challenge list reading I've been doing. It certainly lived up. This is a story about Latina women who met in college & became a tight knit group, even though they were from different places & backgrounds, like Colombia, Cuba, PR, etc. They all became successful in their own rights, & this story, told by a different "sucia" each chapter, explains that sometimes what you see on the outside is very different than what goes on behind closed doors. But through it all, they love each other, & are there for each other when the chips are down. I learned a bit about several different cultures along the way as well, which I really liked.

[marlene9nl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My daughter and me (she was 15 back then) we loved it. This was what I wrote about this book on Monday, July 04, 2005

In case you did not,Rowena (15) stole it from me and she loved the book.
She pleaded to me not to release it she wants me to check if this writer has written more books. (I think this was her first one )

so it was a great success

I had read the first pages but had some problems because so many names and characters are introduced by Lauren in that first chapter
Anyway even though I had some problems I knew I would love this book, and I was right
Love books about various women and there friendships together and in which each of them tells there own story.

That's why I like jennifer Weiner and Rona jaffe's books to and this is one similar.
You did send me (us) a great book of my wish list
Thanks for this spring fling gift :-)

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A blurb from New York claims this reads "like the Hispanic version of Waiting to Exhale." I can see similarities in this tale of close girlfriends, but I hated Waiting to Exhale, while I loved Dirty Girls Social Club. I loved how this book recognized and reveled in the diversity of Hispanics and how we don't fit the stereotypes. That we are white--and black--and only sometimes brown. That besides Catholic, "Latinas come in 'Jew'" as well as Born-Again Christian. That "Hispanic" embraces very different cultures from Old Spain to Indio to African and various mixes thereof. That some of us are Republican and not inevitably Democrat. And those of us from a Caribbean background who enjoy maduros and tostones are enjoying a cuisine very different from the Mexican food you'd find in the American South West. Valdes points all this up through the "Buena Sucios"--a group of six friends who met at Boston University who meet twice a year to keep their bonds strong. There's Amber, a California Chicana and musician who is all into the "Mexica Movement" that tries to return to "Aztec" roots; Sara, a Cuban Jew and stay at home wife and mother; Elizabeth, a network television reporter--she's a black born in Columbia who, judging from her looks, American blacks can't believe isn't a "sister;" the brilliant Usnavys, a Puerto Rican/Dominican who rose to riches from Boston's projects; Rebecca from New Mexico, a magazine entrepreneur who snootily emphasizes her Spanish origins--and then there's Lauren. Lauren is the first character we meet, the first voice in a series of first person narrators--all done in present tense in a manner that makes you feel that each is intimately whispering into your ear. It's a little scary how easily I identified with the abrasive "know-it-all" Lauren. Like her, I'm "not a good Latina" and feel like a "fraud" at times if I present myself as Hispanic. Like her I'm half-Hispanic, with the other half consisting of "white," my Spanish is spotty at best and I'm too light skinned to fit people's conception of "Latina." Thing is, I don't tend to seek out things "ethnic" or Hispanic. I tried this book because it was on a list of book recommendations. But there's so much of the Sucias' experiences I could identify with and recognized. So many lines where I wanted to shout YES--this. After so many books where I've read about how you can recognize a Puerto Rican at a look (often from their flashy knives), it was great to read a book that celebrates how diverse Hispanics are. Beyond that, my heart broke for Elizabeth and Sara, and I'm surprised how much I grew to like Rebecca and Amber. Diametric opposites in so many ways and yet alike in how both struck me at first as poseurs--both irritated me at first acquaintance. I don't know that this novel is so intrinsically good in terms of the writing I'd be so impressed if this was yet another excursion into frothy Upper Class WASPs usually inhabited by chicklit. The book is episodic in structure, and the reviewer that says it rather buys into happiness means having a sig other by your side is right. Yes, much of the plot is predictable yet farfetched. And I have to agree with yet another reviewer who said it was a bit too convenient how the six fell so neatly into different demographic groups of "Hispanic." I also found it hard to credit that portrait of a sweet, sensitive genius drug dealer. But the novel held up enough of a mirror for me to feel right at home with these six (not that home is always a comfortable place to be) and it's not just a celebration of diversity, but of friendship. I loved the time I spent with this group of friends.

[mssbluejay · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Spanglish was horrendous and off-putting for me (I cringed every time); it made the characters sound uneducated, despite their college degrees. The story could have been more tightly woven, instead of a handful of separate stories that were implausibly and loosely strung together. In the end, most of the ladies fit the female stereotype of needing to end up with a man in order to be happy, which is what the author set out not to do (not to mention that two of them were "gold diggers" despite having their own successful careers). The stories were predictable and not as well written as I would have hoped for a book on the New York Times Bestseller List.

[goldnyght · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a little slow to start, but once it got going, it was pretty good. I would have liked Lauren (the main character) to be a little more sympathetic. Even at the end I just found her abrasive.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Five Hispanics become friends in college, forming the sucias, the dirty girls. I love all the Hispanic culture, the Spanish words and phrases, so much that I can overlook the amazing way that each of the five is from a different Spanish subculture, almost as if they were chosen for a Census Bureau study, and the happily-ever-after endings that occur for each woman, even the gay woman journalist, even the battered wife, even the girl dating the former drug dealer.

[kikilon_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started reading this book once and put it down. It definitely benefited from the audio version to make the voices come alive in my head. But I still have he same problem with it. nothing happens. The character sketches are interesting, but nothing's going on. Talking heads taken to the extreme. And in the audio version, moreso than the book, it was confusing to keep in mind whose story I'm supposed to be following. I had a hard time being motivated enough to finish it.

[bibliophile26 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly horrible book. I hated all the Spanglish and some of the women needed to be smacked, Lauren, Amber and Sara particularly. The author wanted to portray the differences between different types of Hispanic women, but all of these characters were unlikeable and such extreme things happened to them that I doubt they are even partially realistic portrayals.

[kikianika · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started reading this book once and put it down. It definitely benefited from the audio version to make the voices come alive in my head. But I still have he same problem with it. nothing happens. The character sketches are interesting, but nothing's going on. Talking heads taken to the extreme. And in the audio version, moreso than the book, it was confusing to keep in mind whose story I'm supposed to be following. I had a hard time being motivated enough to finish it.