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The gender-defying iO Tillett Wright has written a compelling memoir of her unfettered childhood in the Lower East Side of Manhattan of the 1980s', and her journey to discover her artistic and authentic self after a family life of chaos.
It was a tenement building at the centre of the drug-addled, punk-edged, permanent riot that was iO's corner of the Lower East Side of New York City in the '80s and 90's. There iO grew up - or rather scrabbled up - under the broken wing of a fiercely protective, yet wildly negligent mother. Rhonna was a showgirl, actress, dancer, poet. A widow after police murdered her partner, she was also an addict. She doted and obsessed over iO, yet lacked an understanding that a child needs food and sleep and safety.
''Darling Days'' is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience of a child listening closely to their deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let the six-year-old play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step.
Unfolding in animated, crystalline prose, this is an emotionally raw, devastatingly powerful memoir of one young person's extraordinary coming of age - a tale of gender and identity, freedom and addiction, rebellion and survival in a time when punk poverty, heroin and art collided in the urban bohemia of New York's Lower East Side.
Author: iO Tillett Wright.
Paperback 240 Pages Published October 2017