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Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood
The early writings of renowned poet and critical theorist Jackie Wang, drawn from her early zines, indie-lit crit, and prolific early 2000s blog.
Compiled as a field guide, travelogue, essay collection, and weather report, Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun traces Jackie Wang’s trajectory from hard femme to Harvard, from dumpster dives and highway bike rides to dropping out of an MFA program, becoming a National Book Award finalist, and writing her trenchant book Carceral Capitalism . Alien Daughters charts the dream-seeking misadventures of an “odd girl” from Florida who emerged from punk houses and early Tumblr to become the powerful writer she is today. Anarchic and beautifully personal, Alien Daughters is a strange intellectual autobiography that demonstrates Wang’s singular an early life lived where every day and every written word began like the Tarot’s Fool, with a leap of faith.
Compiled as a field guide, travelogue, essay collection, and weather report, Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun traces Jackie Wang’s trajectory from hard femme to Harvard, from dumpster dives and highway bike rides to dropping out of an MFA program, becoming a National Book Award finalist, and writing her trenchant book Carceral Capitalism . Alien Daughters charts the dream-seeking misadventures of an “odd girl” from Florida who emerged from punk houses and early Tumblr to become the powerful writer she is today. Anarchic and beautifully personal, Alien Daughters is a strange intellectual autobiography that demonstrates Wang’s singular an early life lived where every day and every written word began like the Tarot’s Fool, with a leap of faith.
408 pages, Paperback
Published November 21, 2023
140 people are currently reading
2877 people want to read
About the author
Jackie Wang
15 books292 followersJackie Wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, performer, library rat, trauma monster and PhD student at Harvard University. She is the author of a number of punk zines including On Being Hard Femme, as well as a collection of dream poems titled Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
March 13, 2025
As someone who spent a lot of time on feminist blogs in the 2010s, I had probably come across this author’s work before picking up this book, but she wasn’t someone I recognized by name. The good news is that you do NOT have to be a diehard fan of her work already to get a lot out of this book. By the end of it, I felt like she was an old friend.
This book spans the author’s life from roughly ages 18-29. It’s an anthology of her published writing over that time, and it’s neat to see her writing style grow and evolve. The earlier pieces are more diary-like stories about her travels and relationships, while the works at the middle and end of the book lean more toward poetry and feminist/queer theory. I appreciated the sheer diversity of writing styles and ideas in this book.
As a reader in my thirties, I definitely enjoyed the later stuff more, but I think if 19-year-old me had read this book, she would have LOVED reading the author’s drunken travel adventures. This would definitely have been a five-star read at that point in my life.
This book is whip-smart and emotionally powerful, so I recommend it to any curious reader, but I think women in their late teens and early twenties will get the most out of it.
This book spans the author’s life from roughly ages 18-29. It’s an anthology of her published writing over that time, and it’s neat to see her writing style grow and evolve. The earlier pieces are more diary-like stories about her travels and relationships, while the works at the middle and end of the book lean more toward poetry and feminist/queer theory. I appreciated the sheer diversity of writing styles and ideas in this book.
As a reader in my thirties, I definitely enjoyed the later stuff more, but I think if 19-year-old me had read this book, she would have LOVED reading the author’s drunken travel adventures. This would definitely have been a five-star read at that point in my life.
This book is whip-smart and emotionally powerful, so I recommend it to any curious reader, but I think women in their late teens and early twenties will get the most out of it.
December 13, 2023
Feral girlhood? Oh, fuck yeah.
Read
January 9, 2024hard to read this many of a person’s tumblr posts and not feel very connected to them afterward
July 29, 2024
comradeship formed in noncomformity; when i am free the words will have their own way of remembering, the sentence becoming a cave to house the dreams you do not understand <3 i love u jackie!
March 13, 2025
“ask yourself, do you like the way it means so much?” yes, jackie, i do. thank you for being my parasocial queer older sister and simultaneous mediator as i speak to myself about what it means to be alive!
i am not exaggerating; this is my bible. and i will return to this book next time i am feeling untethered (next week probably).
i am not exaggerating; this is my bible. and i will return to this book next time i am feeling untethered (next week probably).
July 15, 2025
Easily mijn favoriete boek van het jaar. Ze schrijft zo intiem, ik zou voor eeuwig in haar gedachten blijven dwalen. Back to chapter 1, deze ga ik eindeloos herlezen <3
May 15, 2024
Opening this book offers you the ultimate passageway to TOTAL ENLIGHTENMENT. Take on a whole new level of gender theory, feminist theory, queer theory, race and ethnic and post-colonial theory. Merge the theoretical with the personal; you can change the world because you ARE the world. I am everything and I am nothing. I am anything and you are, too.
We tell each other what to think, how to think, and why we think. The cognitive creation of human social existence — WE make it up. Since we make it up, we can mold it however we please; we can destroy it, mutilate it, leave it behind. The function of society is fluid, never stagnant. The Social Contract is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
This is a transcendent mixture of an autobiography and of critical essays, overall analyzing IDENTITY THEORY. Consume Wang’s life work of narrations told through zines, blogs, posts, interviews, prose and poetry. I cannot get enough of her brilliant mind. Reading Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun is the transportation into the intimate inner workings of social evolutionary enlightenment.
Essays I want to highlight:
“On Being Hard Femme” (85).
— Discourse on feral femininity; BREAK the gender binaries.
“Channeling the Alien Plath Girl: Emotional Drag/Porn/Excess” (105).
— Alien suffering outside the privilege of white heteronormativity.
“The Phallic-Titty Manifesto: Queer Sex and the Naming of Parts” (108).
— Remastering of “The Laugh of Medusa” by Helene Cixous & “Gender Trouble” by Judith Butler; extended in modern Queer thought, inclusive to the spectrum of gender identity.
“Negative Feminism, Antisocial Queer Theory, and the Politics of Hope” (118).
— Deconstruct binary thought; FLUIDITY is real(?)/EXISTS.
“The Skin Cloth: Race, Fashion, Hygiene, Writing, and Embodied Movement through Space” (149).
— Post-colonial & race identity theory: a costume, a performance; of the flesh? of the construct?
“Aesthetic Forms of Respect for the Status Quo Instill in the Exploited a Mood of Submission and Inhibition: Franz Fanon, Violence, and Writing” (183).
— Break the Literary Canon; dominant culture =/= ‘correct’ culture; OPPRESSION IS TRAUMA [Internalized Racism]; Blow. Up. Language.
“All Joy Lives Inside Violence” (197).
— “The American Dream…” Colonialism = Erasure of Existence; Life requires violence to exist; define unethical mobility.
“Future Anterior: The Grammar of Survival?” (229).
— YOU are defined by the past, present & existence of the future.
“Aliens as a Form of Life: Imagining the Avant-Garde” (240).
— THE MESTIZA, Gloria Anzaldúa; an Asian Alien reprise.
“Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun” (246).
— The MYTH of the Literary Canon (Toni Morrison); white man’s power = suffocating/suppressing construct; I EXIST. I AM I.
“Queering Jackie O, American Royalty / American Outcasts, Lana Del Rey’s White-Girl Archive of Female Suffering, and Graceless Lost Girls” (263).
— Revisiting the Plath Girl and the ALIEN; Lost Girls & inverted power; america’s NIGHTMARE.
We tell each other what to think, how to think, and why we think. The cognitive creation of human social existence — WE make it up. Since we make it up, we can mold it however we please; we can destroy it, mutilate it, leave it behind. The function of society is fluid, never stagnant. The Social Contract is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
This is a transcendent mixture of an autobiography and of critical essays, overall analyzing IDENTITY THEORY. Consume Wang’s life work of narrations told through zines, blogs, posts, interviews, prose and poetry. I cannot get enough of her brilliant mind. Reading Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun is the transportation into the intimate inner workings of social evolutionary enlightenment.
Essays I want to highlight:
“On Being Hard Femme” (85).
— Discourse on feral femininity; BREAK the gender binaries.
“Channeling the Alien Plath Girl: Emotional Drag/Porn/Excess” (105).
— Alien suffering outside the privilege of white heteronormativity.
“The Phallic-Titty Manifesto: Queer Sex and the Naming of Parts” (108).
— Remastering of “The Laugh of Medusa” by Helene Cixous & “Gender Trouble” by Judith Butler; extended in modern Queer thought, inclusive to the spectrum of gender identity.
“Negative Feminism, Antisocial Queer Theory, and the Politics of Hope” (118).
— Deconstruct binary thought; FLUIDITY is real(?)/EXISTS.
“The Skin Cloth: Race, Fashion, Hygiene, Writing, and Embodied Movement through Space” (149).
— Post-colonial & race identity theory: a costume, a performance; of the flesh? of the construct?
“Aesthetic Forms of Respect for the Status Quo Instill in the Exploited a Mood of Submission and Inhibition: Franz Fanon, Violence, and Writing” (183).
— Break the Literary Canon; dominant culture =/= ‘correct’ culture; OPPRESSION IS TRAUMA [Internalized Racism]; Blow. Up. Language.
“All Joy Lives Inside Violence” (197).
— “The American Dream…” Colonialism = Erasure of Existence; Life requires violence to exist; define unethical mobility.
“Future Anterior: The Grammar of Survival?” (229).
— YOU are defined by the past, present & existence of the future.
“Aliens as a Form of Life: Imagining the Avant-Garde” (240).
— THE MESTIZA, Gloria Anzaldúa; an Asian Alien reprise.
“Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun” (246).
— The MYTH of the Literary Canon (Toni Morrison); white man’s power = suffocating/suppressing construct; I EXIST. I AM I.
“Queering Jackie O, American Royalty / American Outcasts, Lana Del Rey’s White-Girl Archive of Female Suffering, and Graceless Lost Girls” (263).
— Revisiting the Plath Girl and the ALIEN; Lost Girls & inverted power; america’s NIGHTMARE.
March 7, 2024
ah, my beloved lunch break book. this has accompanied me almost every day at work for the past month. the pieces are quite short so i would get through a couple and have a nice little escape from my work day.
this is collection of jackie wang’s blog posts, interviews, zines, essays, poetry, etc. the writing spans from 2006, the beginning of her undergrad, to 2016 the beginning of her getting her phd in african and african american studies at harvard. it’s very feminist with a punk mindset and topics include her travels, relationships and queerness, depression, her brother’s imprisonment and how that affected her politics, and the art/literature/film that shaped her.
this is really reminiscent of my tumblr and rookie mag days, but with a bit more edge to it. some pieces and ideas went over my head but i really appreciated the moments where she was recounting emotions and situations that felt very raw and real. i really enjoyed the chronological format and how jackie gave us a description of where she was in life before each part. it was cool to see her ideas develop and the reoccurring themes and imagery that kept popping up.
the main thing that stuck out to me was the way the book created a portrait of who she was at each point in her life - the ways she had changed and stayed the same - as well as the respect and reverence she has for her past self: “the truth is i cannot fully disavow these writings because although many of the pieces are aesthetically green, i respect the person i used to be: fearless, open to the world, guileless, and practiced in the art of living.”
i connected with the form and overarching idea of the work more than the content itself, but was still left with some interesting ideas about girlhood, feminism, and queerness to think about. 3.5 stars rounded up!
reading wrap up!
this is collection of jackie wang’s blog posts, interviews, zines, essays, poetry, etc. the writing spans from 2006, the beginning of her undergrad, to 2016 the beginning of her getting her phd in african and african american studies at harvard. it’s very feminist with a punk mindset and topics include her travels, relationships and queerness, depression, her brother’s imprisonment and how that affected her politics, and the art/literature/film that shaped her.
this is really reminiscent of my tumblr and rookie mag days, but with a bit more edge to it. some pieces and ideas went over my head but i really appreciated the moments where she was recounting emotions and situations that felt very raw and real. i really enjoyed the chronological format and how jackie gave us a description of where she was in life before each part. it was cool to see her ideas develop and the reoccurring themes and imagery that kept popping up.
the main thing that stuck out to me was the way the book created a portrait of who she was at each point in her life - the ways she had changed and stayed the same - as well as the respect and reverence she has for her past self: “the truth is i cannot fully disavow these writings because although many of the pieces are aesthetically green, i respect the person i used to be: fearless, open to the world, guileless, and practiced in the art of living.”
i connected with the form and overarching idea of the work more than the content itself, but was still left with some interesting ideas about girlhood, feminism, and queerness to think about. 3.5 stars rounded up!
reading wrap up!
May 4, 2024
holy shit my love and admiration for jackie wang just increased 100-fold, if that was even possible. both the process of reading and finishing this book made me feel so much— inspiration, tumult, anxiety, nostalgia, compassion, confusion, awe, intellectual stimulation.
it’s a joy and a privilege to witness the brilliant thoughts in jackie’s mind and the poetic narrative of her life journeys.
it’s a joy and a privilege to witness the brilliant thoughts in jackie’s mind and the poetic narrative of her life journeys.
March 8, 2024
I have nothing to say besides that I want to memorize every word of this.
December 7, 2024
My favorite thing I read this year. A portal of a book. Abundantly special. It is the sort of text I want to keep on me, like a talisman, to protect from the stilted, pretentious navel-gazing of so much autotheory. I hope I write a book like this someday. I read as slow as possible and still it wasn't enough time inside Wang's words.
March 6, 2025
“And maybe I am guilty of romanticization, but I say, fuck it. Our lives are grandiose.”
Oh how this spoke to me… I too love to start sentences with “and”; I too love to romanticize everything. And that was just one sentence!! Imagine how the rest of the book made me feel. Jackie Wang has given the world a relentlessly moving, unapologetically weird, freakishly relatable, and tirelessly radical book, and I am both better for having read it, and more known to myself.
Oh how this spoke to me… I too love to start sentences with “and”; I too love to romanticize everything. And that was just one sentence!! Imagine how the rest of the book made me feel. Jackie Wang has given the world a relentlessly moving, unapologetically weird, freakishly relatable, and tirelessly radical book, and I am both better for having read it, and more known to myself.
November 11, 2025
i randomly picked up this book summer 2024 at a bookstore in montreal. (read the first 2/3 last summer and im back to reading it, but feels like i should just write this now before fully finishing.)
this book is awesome. it’s bound more by its raw, feral, playful energy than any particular aboutness. i think the blurbs on the back of the book are honestly good at capturing it, as does its subtitle “an almanac of extreme girlhood”
some essays i liked:
- the one about this insane conspiratorial russian ballerina, refbatch, who jackie randomly deep dives on
- jackie’s extreme sending energy and fearlessness like biking 100 miles at night and hitchhiking with random sus people
- the way she kind of queers friendships like w that exchange student in kunming
- the consistent theme of everything in life being overwhelming/impossible but finding optimism anyway; and kind of the meta theme of totally shifting from manic to depressive states, which feels very real
at a higher level i realized why i find jackie so compelling is that these essays, better than anything else ive ever read, blend feminist/philosophical theory with tensions of daily life in an incredibly natural way. like the fanon essay (p183), or the aliens essays (p240,246).
this book is awesome. it’s bound more by its raw, feral, playful energy than any particular aboutness. i think the blurbs on the back of the book are honestly good at capturing it, as does its subtitle “an almanac of extreme girlhood”
some essays i liked:
- the one about this insane conspiratorial russian ballerina, refbatch, who jackie randomly deep dives on
- jackie’s extreme sending energy and fearlessness like biking 100 miles at night and hitchhiking with random sus people
- the way she kind of queers friendships like w that exchange student in kunming
- the consistent theme of everything in life being overwhelming/impossible but finding optimism anyway; and kind of the meta theme of totally shifting from manic to depressive states, which feels very real
at a higher level i realized why i find jackie so compelling is that these essays, better than anything else ive ever read, blend feminist/philosophical theory with tensions of daily life in an incredibly natural way. like the fanon essay (p183), or the aliens essays (p240,246).
March 16, 2025
oh my god this changed me. i literally haven’t stopped thinking about this since i finished. jackie! is my hero! i can’t wait to read this again (and then again and then probably dare i say again)
lines that made my heart swell!
“you couldn’t not feel anything looking at the back of her head. something so lovely about her sloppily tied back hair. or when she bent down to tie her shoes—how moving it was.”
“i was gobsmacked by the surrealness of the day”
“the objects are themselves—a tableau of absence or a trace of an encounter poorly understood”
“maybe in the same way someone feels they have shape only when they are caring for another”
lines that made my heart swell!
“you couldn’t not feel anything looking at the back of her head. something so lovely about her sloppily tied back hair. or when she bent down to tie her shoes—how moving it was.”
“i was gobsmacked by the surrealness of the day”
“the objects are themselves—a tableau of absence or a trace of an encounter poorly understood”
“maybe in the same way someone feels they have shape only when they are caring for another”
May 4, 2025
“Grandma’s body becomes an ice cream cake.”
maybe i read this at the perfect time but i think anytime would be perfect for jackie wang.
maybe i read this at the perfect time but i think anytime would be perfect for jackie wang.
August 20, 2024
i am going to read this book over and over again until all of it sinks through my thick skull. i feel reborn and inspired and so full of feeling.. thank u jackie for your beautiful mind. INSTANT classic
March 2, 2024
I just loved so much about this author's thought-provoking writing selections. While we've lived significantly different lifestyles, there were so many times where I felt a kinship with her, like some of her writings were things I could have written in my own way. I did find some parts of it dragging and found myself skimming a bit to get to the interesting parts. I still would recommend it to anybody. I really enjoyed it.
September 30, 2024
I really enjoyed this - found it challenging and inspiring.
Read
April 3, 2024This is truly an almanac,., so many pages dog eared and things underlined for future reference. Feels like a deep well of knowledge with lots of jumping off points for further reading & exploration
February 6, 2025
jackie wang doesn’t try to be anyone, she just IS, and so this book doesn’t try to be anything, it just IS. in the best way possible. dreamlike, mysterious, beautifully honest, and most of all unapologetic and fierce. a melange of travel diaries, essays on race and sexuality and feminism, and stream of consciousness style meditations on what it means to be a queer asian woman in this world, or what it doesn’t.
June 27, 2025
Phenomenal compilation of essays, zines, blogs etc . Want to read immediately again and annotate for lessons, challenges, moving moments, words I don’t know, beautiful phrases of poetry.
Jackie Wang was thinking and writing and living queer feminist theory over a decade ago and it feels like society is only just beginning to catch up.
You become her friend and remember and relive in her words how achingly tragically beautiful the human experience is through her journey
“ it was in Pittsburgh when I realized that maybe I really am fundamentally a loner, because I am on a mission to feel and to not be interrupted by prattle or anything less than transcendence.”
Jackie Wang was thinking and writing and living queer feminist theory over a decade ago and it feels like society is only just beginning to catch up.
You become her friend and remember and relive in her words how achingly tragically beautiful the human experience is through her journey
“ it was in Pittsburgh when I realized that maybe I really am fundamentally a loner, because I am on a mission to feel and to not be interrupted by prattle or anything less than transcendence.”
December 27, 2024
you are so her jackie wang i love you
January 19, 2025
i like. really pushed my mind, lots of new vocab and thoughts. poetry isn’t high on my list, and the poetry was hard for my brain but worth the push
May 2, 2025
In awe and terror of the sheer power of publishing your Tumblr posts from the early 2010s
September 22, 2025
Needed to be done with this. It wasn’t bad, in fact, the sentiments were important, I loved that it brought blogging/Tumblr into the taken-seriously sphere, & I think everyone with a shitty partner/friend should read this to release themselves into real girlhood. BUT! Definitely didn’t read it fast enough, so it felt like a dragggggggg to pop back in & read abt someone else’s life musings… I wanted it to be everything & I think under different circumstances, it would be
May 4, 2024
4.5 ⭐️
i randomly picked this book up while browsing because i was immediately drawn to its concept as “an almanac of extreme girlhood.” as a girl who grew up in the era of tumblr, blogging, and scrappy DIY creativity, this instantly felt like home to me.
absolutely love the formatting of this collection of texts, as promised, it reads as diary entries and blog posts. i really loved how she categorizes the various eras of her life and the way those time periods shaped her writing.
also love how open, exploratory, and oftentimes unhinged these entries are! there’s one entry she talks about how the best kinds of writing are the ones where you don’t even know what you’ve read after finishing because the writer was still unraveling and thinking through something as they wrote— taking you along for the journey and allowing you to witness their mind work in real time on the paper. this was definitely that.
lots and lots and lots of gems. absolutely adored. the one thing i will say is that due to the nature of this formatting, there’s a huuuuuge range of topics covered and they seemingly jump from one to the next with no rhyme or reason.
there’s also quite a bit of social and political theory, reviews, and responses to other pieces of work that i found hard to follow when you’re not familiar with the work being referenced. and unfortunately, there’s not much context provided so you just gotta go with it. this was definitely a read where i had to look up things very frequently because of how specific / niche some entries were.
i randomly picked this book up while browsing because i was immediately drawn to its concept as “an almanac of extreme girlhood.” as a girl who grew up in the era of tumblr, blogging, and scrappy DIY creativity, this instantly felt like home to me.
absolutely love the formatting of this collection of texts, as promised, it reads as diary entries and blog posts. i really loved how she categorizes the various eras of her life and the way those time periods shaped her writing.
also love how open, exploratory, and oftentimes unhinged these entries are! there’s one entry she talks about how the best kinds of writing are the ones where you don’t even know what you’ve read after finishing because the writer was still unraveling and thinking through something as they wrote— taking you along for the journey and allowing you to witness their mind work in real time on the paper. this was definitely that.
lots and lots and lots of gems. absolutely adored. the one thing i will say is that due to the nature of this formatting, there’s a huuuuuge range of topics covered and they seemingly jump from one to the next with no rhyme or reason.
there’s also quite a bit of social and political theory, reviews, and responses to other pieces of work that i found hard to follow when you’re not familiar with the work being referenced. and unfortunately, there’s not much context provided so you just gotta go with it. this was definitely a read where i had to look up things very frequently because of how specific / niche some entries were.
April 3, 2024
in early 2021 i was in an upper-div art class with anne walsh, in which i think i did some of my best writing to date... at that time i was processing a messy stupid queer breakup and roiling in severe feelings about the type of person i was & what i was going to try to be as i dragged myself and my devastated brain into the future or whatever... anyway i became obsessed with jackie wang's radar reading series videos on youtube, and would watch them over & over and play them as background noise as i made work because everything she said felt so resonant and relevant to me then. in the videos, she's reading a piece that appears in this book. i still love it!! & may it always remind me of being 22 & rotten-hearted & of cannibalizing my own overwhelming emotional output like the fox gnawing at its own limb until it can break free from the hunter's trap (it created the trap by turning its back on true love btw). DAMN !!
i'm still startled and delighted by wang's range & breadth of vision. i'm so glad to be able to see her work.
Read
January 7, 2025no more ratings this year, just little notes instead. throughout a lot of the first half i thought about maya and me…. then i thought about uninhibited creation, and how nowadays i also qualify everything i write, obsessed w writing’s central paradox, how to actually say what i mean. i’d like to just get it thru my head that close enough is all we got and move on. but i like that wang’s work glances and doesn’t worry how it comes off to look back. my horoscope this year wants me to trust my old(young?) self, and this book is all about trusting in a younger self’s work. maybe i’ll make a zine and doodle in the margins
February 8, 2025
SOO good. One of my favourite reads of the year so far and feeling inspired and existential as in I want to live life like Jackie I want to say YES like her. Her adventurous years, the excerpts from the beautiful zines she wrote while being so alone and so very connected all at once, but also the post-PhD queer theory ? what a perfect cocktail of all the genres I like and oh how she managed to write all the things I have been needing to hear. Developing parasocial relationships to books >>>
January 13, 2025
jackie wang makes me think my life is panning out too seamlessly, like i need to take a leap out there and do something a tad more spontaneous. but what that would entail…
Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews