Description
Book SynopsisIn A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten, award-winning author, sex educator, speaker, and podcast host Tristan Taormino shares her coming-of-age story in which she reveals how the roots of her radical sexuality and career grew out of an extraordinary queer father-daughter relationship.
Trade Review“How fortunate we are to have such a passionate and skillful writer who has chosen to share with us her many wonderful and varied romantic relationships and sexual encounters, and the wisdom she’s accrued in the process. This is such a fun read!” -- Kate Bornstein, author of * Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us *
“Tristan Taormino’s memoir is unabashedly, in-your-face, all-caps QUEER in the best way humanly possible.
A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten is honest, vulnerable, wise, and at parts, heartbreaking. But there is strength amidst the heartbreak, and Taormino’s message of queer acceptance and living without shame always shines through.” -- Zachary Zane, author of * Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto *
“A stunningly beautiful memoir spilling the tea on coming-of-age queerness, pathos, and the pleasure of the century’s end. It’s my perfect time capsule and this is the perfect book.” -- Margaret Cho
"With personal images, sincere prose, and powerfully intimate excerpts from her father’s unpublished memoir, Taormino’s text very much orbits around her relationship with her father. The woman emerging from the grief has become a powerful, inspirational, unapologetic sex educator and creative dynamo. A passionate memoir packed with emotional punch and enlightening glimpses of personal liberation." * Kirkus Reviews *
"Taormino offers both a stirring tribute to her father and a moving acknowledgement that she 'came of age in a time of more visibility and acceptance than he could have imagined.' . . . Open-minded readers will love this no-holds-barred portrait of family ties and personal liberation." * Publishers Weekly *
"
A Part Of The Heart Can’t Be Eaten is an entertaining and important historical document and what makes Taormino’s story especially interesting is that she hails from the days before the internet took over. Her heyday was the 1990s, a time when sexual exploration could still be underground, so it had time to mature." -- Stephanie Theobald * Daily Beast *
"
A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten is a captivating romp through Taormino’s life. . . . This striking portrait of a bold, self-identified femme dyke is intimate, wise, and uncompromising. Taormino offers a kinky sex scene for every emotional gut-punch, sealing her place as a crucial voice in sex and a sharp narrator of both personal and political queer history." -- Ro White * them *
"With candor and clarity, Taormino writes about the journey to becoming a culture-shaping writer and thinker, sparing seemingly few details regarding sexual experiences that defined her, her days at Wesleyan, her femme identity, and her early work. It is often bluntly funny ('Writing and anal sex were my passions'), as well as highly sensitive, particularly in Taormino’s recounting of her experiences with depression, with which she was diagnosed in 1993, and her relationship with her gay father." -- Rich Juzwiak * Jezebel *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Conceived 1
Mrs. C’s 12
Artichoke Hearts 15
First Time 22
The Bunk House 28
Buttercake 31
Sex Ed 38
The Beach House 45
Foxglove 52
P-town 57
The Priest’s Brother 64
Mr. Meltme 69
Time in a Bottle 79
The Shower 83
Slutty 88
No Place Like Home 93
My Closet Has No Door 103
Queer Nation 108
Femme Is My Gender 115
Bombshell 122
Riley 129
Change of Plans 132
Daddy’s Girl 142
Sailor’s Berth 146
The Lesbians Upstairs 153
The Price of Our Redemption 162
Unity 172
Reggie Love 178
Paris 184
Scrambled Eggs with Bette Midler 193
The Wolf 199
Poppie 204
Fallout 207
A Night Like This 215
Pucker Up 219
Anal Sex Made Me 223
Adventure Girl 228
My Gay Boyfriend 234
Heart/Throb 239
Turn Me On 246
Buttman Is on the Phone 250
The Learning Curve 256
Feminist Gang Bang 264
Epilogue: My Father’s Eyes 271
