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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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 9, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780385529747
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780385529747
- File size: 2163 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 15, 2012
A memoir from the lead singer of the band Gossip, chronicling her upbringing in rural Arkansas. While it's true that rock musicians often front-load a lifetime's worth of excess into the first decade of their success, and write their memoir about it from old age--if they make it that long--Ditto's memoir, written with the assistance of Tea (Rose of No Man's Land, 2006, etc.), swings the focus around to the years before her band became successful. The author grew up deep in rural Arkansas, part of a large family that moved in and out of a generous (though also poor) aunt's house, with cousins and siblings and other relatives seeking refuge from alcohol, abuse or the law. Ditto shifted between experimenting with pushing the limits--such as they were, with little adult oversight--and trying to preserve the small pockets of safety available for her younger relatives. High school found her coming out and connecting with other gay students, only to see them leave--they were older and graduated first--and Ditto's senior year stretched out ahead of her. Even leaving school and Arkansas behind and rocketing into the music scene came with difficulties that reflected both the realization of her ambitions and the reality that you can't run from your problems. Ultimately, the book is a rags-to-riches tale that mostly rises above cliche and avoids tired tropes. "What I want is the same thing everyone wants," she writes, "the same thing you want--to hurl myself into this world and trust that it will catch me." A frank, forthright memoir that provides a new perspective on a familiar theme.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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