Adele Bertei in conversation with Evelyn McDonnell about Twist: Tales from a Queer Girlhood & Sinead O'Connor's Universal Mother
Feb 26, 7 PM • Los Angeles, CA: Book Soup • 8818 W Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Adele Bertei discusses & signs her memoir Twist: Tales from a Queer Girlhood & Sinead O’Connor’s Universal Mother (33 ⅓), in conversation with Evelyn McDonnell
Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood is iconic rock-and-roll musician Adele Bertei's harrowing and electric memoir 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 powerful look at survival and redemption despite extremely challenging obstacles" (Kirkus Reviews, Best Nonfiction of 2023). Set in a 1960s and '70s American neighborhood rife with poverty and violence, fatherless Irish mothers and Italian mobsters, women crucified into madness by misogyny, and an unforgettable supporting cast of characters, 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.
A compelling personal history of queer culture from a working-class view, Twist is good medicine: for readers who've experienced similar traumas, for teens caught in the foster care system, for the formerly incarcerated looking for hope, for writers grappling with how to tell their own stories. Most of all, it's for everyone seeking transportive experiences in art and on the page.
With Universal Mother, Sinead O'Connor explores childhood trauma and her experiences as a woman, mother, target of scorn, and ultimate phoenix.
Released in the winter of 1994, Universal Mother was the first recorded work from O'Connor since her duo of protests in 1992 ( Saturday Night Live, Madison Square Garden). The sadistic blowback she faced for publicly outing the child abuse of the Catholic Church and its cover-up would have destroyed most. Where Sinead might go next, or if she'd ever record again, was the question. It's a testament to her integrity and extraordinary courage that she was able to resurrect with this extraordinary album.
The album takes us on a deeply personal, yet universal journey of womanhood, from the archetypal bad mother to the good and the kind. A feminist statement from Germaine Greer sets the tone, followed by O'Connor letting loose a storm of rage against her abusive mother in "Fire on Bablyon"-a salvo so explosive, it need not be repeated. Other than a song called "Red Football" and a call-out of the truth behind the Irish potato famine, O'Connor is not interested in rage or revenge. With Universal Mother, she offers us a tender, evocative collection of grief and empathy in song. Her miraculous voice is the vessel-the broken, sacred voice of Mother Ireland.
“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.
US Release: Mar 14, 2023 • UK Release: May 22, 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 9781736309339 • $28 • 256 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9798988670049 • $18 • 264 pages
