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

Sex educator Taormino (50 Shades of Kink) traces her relationship with her gay father and the blossoming of her own queerness in this soul-baring memoir. Born on Long Island in 1971 and raised by her mother, Taormino began making visits to her father, Bill, in 1979, after he came out of the closet: the pair would spend the occasional summer together in Provincetown seeing drag shows and working in a leather shop. “Fascinated” by sex at Wesleyan University, the author fell in with the school’s queer student organizations, where she discovered her own bisexuality and sexual adventurousness. After college, Taormino moved to New York City, and her father was diagnosed with AIDS. Depressed and already grieving him (he ended up dying in 1995), she decided her life’s work “would be to write and teach people about sex,” beginning with the zine Pucker Up in the mid-’90s and developing into regular speaking engagements and even directing and starring in pornography. Weaving in snippets of Bill’s unpublished memoir, Taormino offers both a stirring tribute to her father and a moving acknowledgement that she “came of age in a time of more visibility and acceptance than he could have imagined.” Her sexual frankness, while not for everyone, lends the proceedings a sting of authenticity. Open-minded readers will love this no-holds-barred portrait of family ties and personal liberation. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books. (Sept.)