• A memoir by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (last name pronounced "Pee-EPP-shnah, Suh-muh-ruh-SINGH-hah"), a poet/activist who is well regarded within queer, South Asian, and disabled communities. While she has written essays and contributed to anthologies, this is her first non-poetry book to be published.
• Leah, who was raised in Worcester, MA, describes how she ran away from America in 1996 and ended up in Toronto, where she found herself amidst a community of anarchopunks intent on revolution. Throughout the book, she works her way through the personal and the political of intersectionality as she comes to identify as a queer femme of color, as a disabled person grappling with chronic illness (she has suffered from fibromyalgia since 1998), and as an abuse survivor.
• The "dirty river" of the title refers to Blackstone River near Worcester, which is contaminated due to the numerous factories in the area; it is Leah's metaphor for how coming to terms with her own "contaminated" past and becoming (and embracing) the complex person she is - and all of us are.
• The book's autobiographical structure brings to mind Audre Lorde's Zumi.
• This book combines Arsenal's interest in LGBT literature (Amber Dawn, Ivan E. Coyote) with postcolonial literature (Vivek Shraya, Wayde Compton).