Girl Gone Wild: The Hollywood Misadventures of a Small-Town Girl

Podcaster and essayist Kocak debuts with a raw and often funny memoir-in-essays about coming-of-age and pursuing a writing career in Los Angeles. Organized semichronologically, the collection charts Kocak’s evolution from an ambitious child in Minnesota who was inspired by Waiting for Guffman’s delusional dreamers to a woman reckoning with the personal costs of life in Hollywood. The emotional center is Kocak’s examination of power and exploitation, which permeates her recollections of troubled romantic relationships throughout her 20s and her uncomfortable stint selling T-shirts for a Girls Gone Wild tour shortly after she arrived in L.A. in 2005. Kocak writes with striking openness about her loss of innocence, calling out boys and men who’ve hurt her and interrogating a culture that enabled them to do so, but she lightens the load with sardonic humor (as when she recalls unsuccessfully flirting with a beau’s “stiff ass”) and palpable affection for the young woman she used to be. When the narrative progresses into her comedy writing career, it grows buoyant, even as Kocak acknowledges the ruthlessness and financial precarity of creative work. Intimate and winningly unfiltered, this offers welcome guidance to those struggling through the messy process of finding themselves. (Apr.)