Beth Ditto’s memoir begins in rural Arkansas, where poverty, Pentecostal religion, queerness and family chaos coexist.

She writes about growing up fat, poor and visibly different; about a mother overwhelmed by life; and about learning early that shame is most useful to the people trying to keep you manageable.

From there, Coal to Diamonds follows Ditto into punk houses, queer communities and the formation of Gossip, tracing how a girl from the American South became an unlikely fashion figure and internationally recognised musician. Co-written with Michelle Tea, the book retains Ditto’s blunt humour and refusal of tasteful self-mythology. 

A sharp, generous memoir about constructing a public self without abandoning the difficult people and places that produced it. For readers interested in queer life, fat politics, punk culture, family and the unruly social machinery behind celebrity.

Simon & Schuster paperback, 2012. First UK edition. Light cover and spine wear; clean and firmly bound.