Cool for you : a novel
(Book)

Why can't I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work. The first published novel of legendary poet and performer Eileen Myles follows a queer female growing up in working-class Boston, straining against the institutions that hold her: family, Catholic school, jobs at a camp, at a nursing home, at a school for developmentally disabled adult males. Free-ranging and deadpan, tragic and joyful, this is a book about women, gender, class, bodies, escape, and what it means to be "inside."

Originally published:,2000.