The End of San Francisco

"A blisteringly honest portrait of a young, fast and greatly misunderstood life . . . An outspoken, gender-ambiguous author and activist reflects on her halcyon days as a wild child in San Francisco."–Kirkus Reviews

" . . . one of the most important memoirs of the decade . . . The End of San Francisco is one of the most vulnerable memoirs I've read."–Ariel Gore, Psychology Today

"It is so difficult to assess The End of San Francisco because it is a work of such blazing originality that one cannot compare it to anything else and say 'this is more or less successful than that.' The experience of The End of San Francisco simply bears no comparison."–Charles Kruger, Litseen

"The End Of San Francisco, published by City Lights, is activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's denunciation of assimilation . . . This book is a useful reminder that the gay community is far from monolithic and that it is especially important to listen to the voices of resistance."–June Thomas, Slate

"Sycamore's associative, non-linear narrative is filled with sparkling language that illuminates the importance of reaching for connection and alive-ness in the face of brutality and loss."–Wendy Elisheva Somerson, Tikkun

"The result is brilliant, a collection of unstructured vignettes about sex abuse, dying parents, feminism and veganism, Tracy Chapman and Le Tigre, dyke bars and gay tricks, AIDS and ACT UP that all weave together a life of hope in '90s San Francisco and the disappointment that follows."–Diane Anderson-Minshall, The Advocate

"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's whip-raw memoir The End of San Francisco is all about . . . the need to discover who you are by defining yourself in a place. She avoids the cliches of other angry young memoirs by sharing her protagonist role with San Francisco."–Paul Constant, The Stranger

"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's long awaited memoir The End of San Francisco will rip you open, crack your rib-cage and pour glitter into your heart. It's hard and captivating, a book that truly pulls you in and won't let you go. Brutal and brilliant, the memoir weaves in and out of time, bringing readers into the intimate details of Sycamore's adolescence and early activist days."–Sassafras Lowrey, Lambda Literary

"The End of San Francisco could be the most insightful break-up memoir the city has ever received."–Ingrid Rojas Contreras, KQED San Francisco

"Searing, funny, maudlin, elegiac, infuriating, and confessional, The End of San Francisco is a deliberately disordered collection of vignettes dealing mostly with Sycamore's span living in the city . . . a brilliant writer . . . "–Marke B., SF Bay Guardian

"The End of San Francisco is the opposite of nostalgia. Nostalgia is fundamentally conservative, and its conservatism is often embedded in the form in which stories are told. The End of San Francisco seems to me radical, not just in content, but formally, in insisting on other ways of remembering and documenting."–Jessica Hoffman, Los Angeles Review of Books

"The 'infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder, and anti-assimilation commentator' brings you the story of her escape to San Francisco. This is a wonderfully messy mix of memoir, social history, and elegy."–Alexis Coe, SF Weekly

" . . . a fin-de-siècle late '90s narrative that captures the city's underground demimondaine of artists, punks, activists, anarchists and addicts whose ranks will soon be, if not completely swept away by the tech boom's false promises, then severely thinned by gentrification."–Tomas Mournian, Huffington Post