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

by Tristan Taormino

In A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten, award-winning author, sex educator, filmmaker, and podcast host Tristan Taormino shares her coming-of-age story, revealing how her radical sexuality and unconventional career grew out of an extraordinary queer father-daughter relationship. Raised by a hard-working single mother on Long Island, Tristan got her sex ed from the 1980s TV show Solid Gold and The Joy of Sex. She spent summers at drag shows in Provincetown with her father, Bill, who had come out as gay in the mid-1970s. Her sexual identity bloomed during her college years at Wesleyan University, where she discovered her desire for butches and kinky sex.

Tristan’s world began to fall apart when her dad was diagnosed with AIDS. After a series of devastating events, she moved to the messy, glorious world of 1990s New York City. In the midst of grief and depression, she helped change queer sexual subculture with her zine Pucker Up, her infamous The Village Voice column, and her editorship of legendary lesbian porn magazine On Our Backs. After the publication of her first book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, Tristan followed her own path that marked the beginning of her work as a trailblazing feminist pornographer.

After a lifetime of outrageous adventures, Tristan reflects on the bonds, loss, and mental-health struggles that shaped her. She weaves together history from her father’s unpublished memoir, exploring the surprising ways their personal patterns converge and diverge. Bracingly emotional and erotically charged, A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten reveals the transformative power of queer pleasure and defiance.

Genres: Memoir, Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, Sex Work, Audiobook

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 28, 2023

About the author

Tristan Taormino is an award-winning writer, sex educator, speaker, filmmaker, and radio host. She is the editor of 25 anthologies and author of seven books, including her latest, The Feminist Porn Book, 50 Shades of Kink: An Introduction to BDSM, The Secrets of Great G-Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation, The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge and Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, winner of a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. As the head of Smart Ass Productions, she has directed and produced twenty-four adult films. She is the producer and host of Sex Out Loud, a weekly radio show on the VoiceAmerica Network.

Reviews

[Bella · Rating 3 out of 5]

my feelings on this are complicated: i enjoyed this memoir for what it was. tristan very clearly communicates her relationship with her father, which was complicated by him leaving early in her life and later by his mental health issues and health issues due to AIDS.

however, I did feel like the structure was a little loosey-goosey, which made it difficult to follow, especially in the middle. Additionally, it felt like we spent a long time with young Tristan and then when we got to her later life, especially as she entered sex education/sex talk/porn space, it just went so fast. I wish more time had been spent exploring her later life.

She introduces some really cool topics relating to queerness and gender, sex and bdsm and i wish those had been parsed out more. I do understand why it wasn’t, considering this is a memoir and not queer theory, but I was a sociology major, sue me.

reading about tristan’s relationship with her father was moving, and the way she demonstrates their connection through their queerness, but disconnect due to him living his queerness was wonderful. his journey to living as a queer man meaning that he left his family and tristan’s feelings that it was her fault was so meaningful to me.

i went into this book not entirely knowing who tristan taormino was, but I’m very glad I picked it up. I want to go back through and write down all the people and books and events that she mentioned.

[Tonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Tristan Taormino's since the late 90s. How could I not be into someone who was telling women how great that anal sex is?? At the time, I was the only woman I knew who openly enjoyed it. I have all of her books. I have several of her directed films.

I'm so honored to feel like I had a small part in bringing this to life. I had early glimpses into this memoir as a patron of her Patreon. But those brief looks did not prepare me.

Reading this memoir felt like sitting next to Tristan on the couch as she told me her early life story. It was like watching her grow and come of age before my very eyes. I laughed with her when things were funny. I curled up and cried with her when they got dark and sad. And when the story got steamy... oh my!

Tristan writes honestly and from the heart. She doesn't shy away from mistakes she made. You can feel how strongly she loves her father. Her heartaches are agonizing. And the joys are palpable.

This is a wonderful, bittersweet, genuine memoir. I'm so glad she shared herself with us.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book! As a millennial it was so interesting to see a slice of life for a radical queer Gen X'er in the 90s. I loved Taormino's vivid and celebratory descriptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. However I also really wanted to know more about her relationship with her dad. Even though that relationship is a central theme of the book, it seems under-explored.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really feel qualified to leave the first review, but I enjoyed this book and can recommend it. I haven't read any of the author's other books, but I love memoirs, especially by queer people so I was interested when I saw a post about it on Instagram.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is fascinating to be able to read the memoir of a queer "elder", someone who has been around the block as an activist, sex educator, pornographer, and more - especially intertwined with her gay father's memoir and his battle with AIDS. A really radical autobiography. Thank you, Tristan.

[Caley Lowe]

All I knew about this book going in was that it was queer. I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading a memoir about someone I knew nothing about. I learned so much from this book. It is truly a beautiful read.

[Macklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect pride month read! I always love reading the stories of the queer women who came before me. This book made me feel seen, and it served as a much needed reminder of our community's resilience.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars