DARLING DAYS
By iO Tillett Wright
Harper, September 27, 2016
Unfolding in animated, crystalline prose, an emotionally raw, devastatingly powerful memoir of one young woman’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.
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 her family and home life devolve into chaos.
Selected Praise
“An earnest and heartfelt memoir cloaked under a battle-toughened exterior.” (Kirkus)
“It’s already a rare and wonderful thing to have a great story-but a unique and compelling voice to tell it with is even rarer. With Darling Days, iO Tillett Wright takes us right to where great storytelling lives. A terrific, terrific book.” (Anthony Bourdain)
“Reading Darling Days I’m reminded of what I liked best in Patti Smith’s Just Kids. In brutally honest and passionate prose, iO presents the blossoming of an artist, this time in the eighties, on New York’s Lower East Side.” (Mitchell Kaplan, Books and Books)
“iO Tillett Wright is nothing short of a force of nature-an artist, an activist, and a survivor. She has packed a lot in her young years and in her extraordinary memoir she has created something brave and true, as devastating as it is inspiring..” (Jill Soloway, Emmy-award winning creator of Transparent)
About the Author
iO Tillett Wright contributes regularly to two blogs at the New York Times / T Magazine: "Notes from the Underground" and "The Lowdown," and has published three limited edition books of photographs: LOSE MY NUMBER, KISSER, and LOOK MA’, NO HANDS. In 2010 she began a project called Self Evident Truths, photographing anyone that felt like they qualified to fall on some part of the LGBTQ spectrum, from bisexual, to transgender. The project is considered one of the foremost art based activist projects working toward equal rights in the LGBTQ community today, and her TED Talk in 2012, “Fifty Shades of Gay,” has so far received over one million views. Additionally, iO has directed several music videos, worked as a professional film actor for 19 years, and founded the world's first nationally distributed street art magazine, Overspray.