Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter

Teenage hell has never been captured with such intense honesty as these actual letters sent in the late '80s from a suicidal girl to the singer of her favorite band.

Go Ask Ogre peers into the world of a misfit cutter who lives with an abusive mother in the rust belt. A tailspin of suicidal depression and self-injury leads her to write Ogre, front man for the industrial rock band Skinny Puppy. Soon he receives a flood of elaborately illustrated letters and journals filled with Jolene's most intimate thoughts--from her most painful secrets to hilarious observations and lucid realizations about her life and those around her.

At a concert, Ogre confides to Jolene that he has saved all her letters. Nine years later, a box from Ogre arrives at Jolene's door. Re-examining the documents, she realizes that writing these letters had saved her life.

Go Ask Ogre compiles Jolene Siana's actual letters, artwork, illustrations, and ephemera into a unique and powerful story of an extremely troubled teen who made it through the worst years of her life, and, through the power of music and art, transformed herself in the process. It is heavily illustrated and full color throughout.

Critical Praise:

Pure, lucid and engaging...more authentic for a new generation of young women than, say, the 1971 cautionary tale about drugs, Go Ask Alice.--Susan Carpenter, LA Times

Dark, funny and touching...--boingboing.net

Cringingly confessional, persistently desperate, yet often uproariously funny. All rendered and packaged in labor-intensive psychedelic outsider graphic design. An overdue riposte to the bludgeoning morality of the fabricated Go Ask Alice.--Doug Harvey, LA Weekly

By turns fierce, funny, heartbreaking and wise, Jolene Siana's Go Ask Ogre burns onto the page in an intense collage of words and images that together create a portrait of a gifted young woman fighting to hang on to her own life and choosing an unlikely--but strangely suitable--ally for her battle.--Caroline Kettlewell, author of Skin Game

Amidst the cultural and political corruption of the late 1980s, seeking and artistic teens like Jolene Siana found cathartic solace in aggressive and so-called 'morbid' bands like Skinny Puppy. That she persevered with the help of music that parents, preachers, and politicians condemned, but rarely tried to understand, is a moving lesson.--Alan Rapp, editor of The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon and Dan Eldon: The Art of Life

Author: Jolene Siana
Publisher: Process
Published: 05/01/2005
Pages: 180
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.98h x 7.14w x 0.54d
ISBN: 9780976082217


Award: Independent Publisher Book Awards - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Ingram Advance 05/01/2005 pg. 116
School Library Journal 01/01/2006 pg. 174

About the Author
Jolene Siana lives in Los Angeles and spends her time writing, painting, photographing people and traveling to Amsterdam every year. Bonnie McLaughlin, MA, MFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Burbank, California, since 1990. She specializes in issues related to relationships, parenting, and recovery from childhood abuses.