'Coal to Diamonds' book jacket
Dynamic and always on the move, southern chanteuse Beth Ditto has a lot more to her story than just music — as if that wasn’t enough. So the buzz has begun over her much-anticipated memoir, Coal to Diamonds, even though a release date has still not been set.
Hipster dyke novelist Michelle Tea, author of occasionally shocking but sincere stories such Rent Girl, or the seminal San Francisco dyke manifesto Valencia, is helping her craft the tome. This should be an interesting mix. Gregarious but very down to earth, Ditto is usually pretty straightforward in the way she communicates, using her southern drawl to tell it like it is. Tea, on the other hand, is free and frisky as any fiction writer with her adjectives, describing details in a way that the boisterous Ditto might merely proclaim.
It is also going to solidify its readers as queer bohemian feminists with just an edge of cool. Successful in targeting an audience, it remains to be seen if reviewers will take a sort of grown up riot grrl aesthetic seriously. My hope is that they will. The rambunctious ’90s teenagers have grown into sophisticated artists with a keen third wave feminist perspective that definitely could use a little more notice and critical acclaim.
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