I WAS BORN, SEPTEMBER 1985, IN THE VORTEX OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK:
THERE WERE FEW RULES OF LIFE AND ZERO CONTRAINTS ON BEHAVIOUR. IF YOU WERE NOT
ECCENTRIC, YOU WERE WEIRD.
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 by police murder, she
was also an addict. She doted and obsessed over iO, yet lacked an understanding
that a child needs food and sleep and safety.
Unfolding in animated, crystalline prose, 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 the 1980s
and 1990s, when punk poverty, heroin and art collided in the urban bohemia of
New York's Lower East Side.
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, a choice the parents support and celebrate.
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.
Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the
candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic
self as family and home life devolve into chaos until iO escapes to Germany
and then England to become an amazingly talented, exciting, edgy artist and
wonderful writer.
A New York memoir of an unfettered childhood in the Lower East Side of the
1980s
Verlag: Little, Brown and Company Seiten: 400 S.
Erscheinungsjahr: 2016 Ausführung: Fester Einband