I Ran into Some Trouble
Best known for the influence of her store, Mnasidika, and her association with Janis Joplin, Peggy Caserta has the devil’s own luck. Relentless and relentlessly unafraid to use all the advantages at her disposal, her story is a wild ride. Caserta’s I Ran Into Some Trouble, written with Maggie Falcon, bypasses the scandal sheets to explain Caserta’s perspective on a life thoroughly lived.
Caserta focuses on her journey from being a small-town Louisiana girl to becoming a fashion, culture, and tabloid sensation to finding her place as a quiet retiree and parental caretaker. Careful to centralize her own life, she steers clear of overreliance on her celebrity connections. She digs into the elements of her life that happened outside of the public view, as she hustled to make something of herself and keep that sense of self intact through grief, loss, abuse, and addiction.
While Caserta recognizes her advantages, especially her parents and their ever-present emotional and financial support, it’s also easy to see how her wealth and her whiteness often insulated her from the worst consequences of her behavior. Her meteoric rise as a fashion powerhouse and cultural influencer is shadowed by debauchery, troubled relationships, financial instability, health problems, and addiction. Yet, unlike some of her peers, Caserta survived, not unscathed, but relatively intact. Why is a question even she can’t fully answer.
In many ways, I Ran Into Some Trouble is Caserta’s reclamation of her own story, a second chance after the infamous Going Down with Janis. While there’s some regret for the decisions she abdicated during the worst of her addiction, this memoir isn’t about apologies. Rather, Caserta focuses on telling her story her way and owning it. The experience is less salacious and infinitely more astonishing in the scope of what she did, what was done to her, and what she got away with.
Reviewed by
Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
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