Book-It 'o13! Book #5
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Coal to Diamonds: A Memoir by Beth Ditto with Michelle Tea
Details: Copyright 2012, Spiegel & Grau Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A raw and surprisingly beautiful coming-of-age memoir, Coal to Diamonds tells the story of Mary Beth Ditto, a girl from rural Arkansas who found her voice.
Born and raised in Judsonia, Arkansas-a place where indoor plumbing was a luxury, squirrel was a meal, and sex ed was taught during senior year in high school (long after many girls had gotten pregnant and dropped out) Beth Ditto stood out. Beth was a fat, pro-choice, sexually confused choir nerd with a great voice, an eighties perm, and a Kool Aid dye job. Her single mother worked overtime, which meant Beth and her five siblings were often left to fend for themselves. Beth spent much of her childhood as a transient, shuttling between relatives, caring for a sickly, volatile aunt she nonetheless loved, looking after sisters, brothers, and cousins, and trying to steer clear of her mother’s bad boyfriends.
Her punk education began in high school under the tutelage of a group of teens-her second family-who embraced their outsider status and introduced her to safety-pinned clothing, mail-order tapes, queer and fat-positive zines, and any shred of counterculture they could smuggle into Arkansas. With their help, Beth survived high school, a tragic family scandal, and a mental breakdown, and then she got the hell out of Judsonia. She decamped to Olympia, Washington, a late-1990s paradise for Riot Grrrls and punks, and began to cultivate her glamorous, queer, fat, femme image. On a whim-with longtime friends Nathan, a guitarist and musical savant in a polyester suit, and Kathy, a quiet intellectual turned drummer-she formed the band Gossip. She gave up trying to remake her singing voice into the ethereal wisp she thought it should be and instead embraced its full, soulful potential. Gossip gave her that chance, and the raw power of her voice won her and Gossip the attention they deserved.
Marked with the frankness, humor, and defiance that have made her an international icon, Beth Ditto’s unapologetic, startlingly direct, and poetic memoir is a hypnotic and inspiring account of a woman coming into her own."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been mildly interested in Beth Ditto after reading some about her in this otherwise inane book and this was oddly suggested to me after finishing Damien Echol's memoir.
How I Liked It: Beth Ditto's life story is nothing if not fascinating. An insider of the Riot Grrl revolution whose beginnings are so humble as to be a book in and of themselves, she's also a razor-sharp sociopolitical figure that can deliver the phrase "fat politics" unashamedly.
So I was interested to read her memoir, despite the fact she has a ghost-writer and the title seemed especially lame. The book is written at a level that would make it appealing to a teenager, but not obnoxiously so. The book, particularly its frank depictions of poverty, sexual abuse, and questioning of gender, sexuality, and beauty, would be a wonderful gift for a developing mind, particularly one that feels especially isolated.
That is to say, the book is a gift for the first three-quarters or so. The more famous Beth Ditto gets in the book, the lazier the writing becomes. In what could be far more interesting and better explored topics such as coping with and comprehending fame, posing for photoshoots, designing her own fashion line, and taking the runway herself for Jean Paul Gaultier, come across as a mixture of a press release and a slap-dash ending.
Even in its best sections, the book is still a little rocky between the voices of its author and its ghostwriter, and it's prone to tangents and non-endings to stories (of course true stories don't necessarily always, if ever, have clear endings, but a simple "I never heard from him again after that," "I don't see her anymore, but we keep in touch by sporadic e-mail," "The last I heard he was out on parole," caps it fine).
Overall, it's still a thought-provoking and gripping book about an important feminist figure exploring topics that need exploring.
Notable: Among her milestones, Ditto lists "Our [Gossip's] first time playing Coachella and meeting my longtime idol John Waters!" (pg 152)
Apt, since she lists in the book Divine as one of her role models.
Title: Coal to Diamonds: A Memoir by Beth Ditto with Michelle Tea
Details: Copyright 2012, Spiegel & Grau Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A raw and surprisingly beautiful coming-of-age memoir, Coal to Diamonds tells the story of Mary Beth Ditto, a girl from rural Arkansas who found her voice.
Born and raised in Judsonia, Arkansas-a place where indoor plumbing was a luxury, squirrel was a meal, and sex ed was taught during senior year in high school (long after many girls had gotten pregnant and dropped out) Beth Ditto stood out. Beth was a fat, pro-choice, sexually confused choir nerd with a great voice, an eighties perm, and a Kool Aid dye job. Her single mother worked overtime, which meant Beth and her five siblings were often left to fend for themselves. Beth spent much of her childhood as a transient, shuttling between relatives, caring for a sickly, volatile aunt she nonetheless loved, looking after sisters, brothers, and cousins, and trying to steer clear of her mother’s bad boyfriends.
Her punk education began in high school under the tutelage of a group of teens-her second family-who embraced their outsider status and introduced her to safety-pinned clothing, mail-order tapes, queer and fat-positive zines, and any shred of counterculture they could smuggle into Arkansas. With their help, Beth survived high school, a tragic family scandal, and a mental breakdown, and then she got the hell out of Judsonia. She decamped to Olympia, Washington, a late-1990s paradise for Riot Grrrls and punks, and began to cultivate her glamorous, queer, fat, femme image. On a whim-with longtime friends Nathan, a guitarist and musical savant in a polyester suit, and Kathy, a quiet intellectual turned drummer-she formed the band Gossip. She gave up trying to remake her singing voice into the ethereal wisp she thought it should be and instead embraced its full, soulful potential. Gossip gave her that chance, and the raw power of her voice won her and Gossip the attention they deserved.
Marked with the frankness, humor, and defiance that have made her an international icon, Beth Ditto’s unapologetic, startlingly direct, and poetic memoir is a hypnotic and inspiring account of a woman coming into her own."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been mildly interested in Beth Ditto after reading some about her in this otherwise inane book and this was oddly suggested to me after finishing Damien Echol's memoir.
How I Liked It: Beth Ditto's life story is nothing if not fascinating. An insider of the Riot Grrl revolution whose beginnings are so humble as to be a book in and of themselves, she's also a razor-sharp sociopolitical figure that can deliver the phrase "fat politics" unashamedly.
So I was interested to read her memoir, despite the fact she has a ghost-writer and the title seemed especially lame. The book is written at a level that would make it appealing to a teenager, but not obnoxiously so. The book, particularly its frank depictions of poverty, sexual abuse, and questioning of gender, sexuality, and beauty, would be a wonderful gift for a developing mind, particularly one that feels especially isolated.
That is to say, the book is a gift for the first three-quarters or so. The more famous Beth Ditto gets in the book, the lazier the writing becomes. In what could be far more interesting and better explored topics such as coping with and comprehending fame, posing for photoshoots, designing her own fashion line, and taking the runway herself for Jean Paul Gaultier, come across as a mixture of a press release and a slap-dash ending.
Even in its best sections, the book is still a little rocky between the voices of its author and its ghostwriter, and it's prone to tangents and non-endings to stories (of course true stories don't necessarily always, if ever, have clear endings, but a simple "I never heard from him again after that," "I don't see her anymore, but we keep in touch by sporadic e-mail," "The last I heard he was out on parole," caps it fine).
Overall, it's still a thought-provoking and gripping book about an important feminist figure exploring topics that need exploring.
Notable: Among her milestones, Ditto lists "Our [Gossip's] first time playing Coachella and meeting my longtime idol John Waters!" (pg 152)
Apt, since she lists in the book Divine as one of her role models.