Like Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, Debra Busman's like a woman is a vivid coming-of-age story, revealing the lives of teenage girls on the streets of Los Angeles, trying to hold onto their sense of humanity against a backdrop of racism, poverty, sexism, and violence.

Debra Busman is co-director of the Creative Writing and Social Action Program at CSU Monterey Bay. Her work has been published in Combined Destinies: Whites Share Grief About Racism, Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape, Social Justice: New Pedagogies for Social Change, and the Los Angeles Review. This is her first novel.