Twist: An American Girl

Adele Bertei's memoir Twist is a harrowing and electric story of transforming trauma through art, pluck, and imagination. Set in a 1960s and 70s American neighborhood, Bertei speaks through her alter ego, Maddie Twist, to flip the victim script. Through her belief in imagination, poetry, music, and community, she transforms trauma into survival. The book offers insight into long-enduring systemic problems and is a sharp yet tender arrow to the heart of the naked truth. It is a compelling personal history of queer culture from a working-class view and a glimpse into worlds yet unseen.

Format: Hardback
Length: 250 pages
Publication date: 27 April 2023
Publisher: ZE Books

One of the most original, amazing stories I've ever read (Mary Gaitskill), iconic rock-and-roll musician Adele Bertei's memoir Twist is her harrowing and electric story of transforming trauma through art, pluck, and imagination, as told through the inimitable voice of her young alter ego, Maddie Twist. From iconoclastic writer and musician Adele Bertei comes a wholly original hero's journey that wages war on the cliché of the misery memoir. Set in a 1960s and 1970s American neighborhood rife with poverty and violence, fatherless Irish mothers and Italian mobsters, and women crucified into madness by misogyny, Bertei speaks through her electrically alive avatar Maddie Twist to flip the victim script. Through her unshakable belief in imagination, poetry, music, and community, she transforms trauma into survival. The immediacy of Maddie's voice is a revelation, providing insight into long-enduring systemic problems without the scrim of adult analysis. In an age of lies and obfuscation, Twist is a sharp yet tender arrow to the heart of naked truth. Bertei reveals what it's like to be a queer teen at a time when discovery could be fatal. Maddie peers deeply into the American psyche, refusing to consent to the systems of harm. Along the way, we encounter an unforgettable schizophrenic mother, Catholic saints, West Side Story and Oliver!, poet killers, the abyss of rape, girl-gangsters and faux-pimps, teenage lesbian sex, racial tensions and misconceived divides, a drag family known as the Holy Maudlins, Vietnam vets in dark and light, cabaret, true family, rock and roll. And the ultimate saving grace: love. A compelling personal history of queer culture from a working-class view and a glimpse into worlds yet unseen, Twist is good medicine: for readers who've experienced similar traumas, for teens.

Weight: 402g
Dimension: 147 x 223 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781736309339