A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten: A Memoir by Tristan Taormino

A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten is a memoir by Tristan Taormino, an award-winning author, sex educator, filmmaker, and podcast host. The book traces Taormino’s coming-of-age story, beginning with her childhood on Long Island raised by a single mother, through summers spent at drag shows in Provincetown with her father Bill, who came out as gay in the mid-1970s. During her college years at Wesleyan University, Taormino’s sexual identity developed as she discovered her attraction to butches and kinky sex. The narrative shifts when her father was diagnosed with AIDS, leading to a series of devastating events that prompted her move to 1990s New York City. There, amid grief and depression, Taormino became a transformative figure in queer sexual subculture through her zine Pucker Up, her Village Voice column, her editorship of On Our Backs magazine, and the publication of her first book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, establishing herself as a trailblazing feminist pornographer. The memoir weaves together history from her father’s unpublished memoir, exploring how their personal patterns converge and diverge, while reflecting on the bonds, loss, and mental-health struggles that shaped her life and work. Format: Paperback. Color: Green.