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Prose and Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work #4
Prose and Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work
“[The stories] that comprise this journal are straightforward without a lot of literary tropes or tricks yet their harsh and sticky realities pull readers in. A testament to Red Umbrella’s workshops, from which most of these works hail, they’re entertaining and edifying, even enlightening, at times. They are not by any means self-pitying stories but come from perspectives that are often humorous, seductive, pissed, confused, and psycho-sexually indignant.” - The Review Review
“...The goal is to reveal the nuance of sex work and to let those in the industry speak for themselves.” - DNAinfo New York
“It is not uncommon for the media to skew the perspective of those who have worked in the sex industry, painting a picture of bad and dangerous people, with real life stories often going unheard. But since 2009, the Red Umbrella Project, a nonprofit group based in Downtown Brooklyn, has been providing a venue and an outlet for unheard voices of American sex workers.” - Downtown Brooklyn
“...The goal is to reveal the nuance of sex work and to let those in the industry speak for themselves.” - DNAinfo New York
“It is not uncommon for the media to skew the perspective of those who have worked in the sex industry, painting a picture of bad and dangerous people, with real life stories often going unheard. But since 2009, the Red Umbrella Project, a nonprofit group based in Downtown Brooklyn, has been providing a venue and an outlet for unheard voices of American sex workers.” - Downtown Brooklyn
- GenresSex Work
149 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 2014
227 people want to read
About the author
Audacia Ray
16 books272 followersAudacia Ray (they/them) is a writer and advocate who has thrown in their lot with queers, survivors, nature weirdos, and readers. Dacia has supported community safety planning efforts at Drag Story Hour events since 2021, bikes the Nonbinarian Book Bike around Brooklyn to give away free queer books, has worked at the New York City Anti-Violence Project for the past seven years and is an aspiring naturalist.
A longtime memoir and nonfiction writer, Audacia shifted their writing practice to fiction in 2021.They are a Tin House Winter Workshop alumn with short stories published in The Hopper, Necessary Fiction, Litro Magazine, Superstition Review, and Stone Canoe, and they are at work on a queer, intergenerational novel.
As a sex worker rights advocate Dacia was known for leading sex worker rights campaigns as founding director of the Red Umbrella Project, being an editor of $pread magazine, and hosting the monthly storytelling series the Red Umbrella Diaries (as well as appearing in and executive producing a feature documentary of the same name). Their first book, Naked on the Internet, was published by Seal Press in 2007 and in that same year they won a Feminist Porn Award for Best Bisexual Scene with their directorial debut The Bi Apple.
A longtime memoir and nonfiction writer, Audacia shifted their writing practice to fiction in 2021.They are a Tin House Winter Workshop alumn with short stories published in The Hopper, Necessary Fiction, Litro Magazine, Superstition Review, and Stone Canoe, and they are at work on a queer, intergenerational novel.
As a sex worker rights advocate Dacia was known for leading sex worker rights campaigns as founding director of the Red Umbrella Project, being an editor of $pread magazine, and hosting the monthly storytelling series the Red Umbrella Diaries (as well as appearing in and executive producing a feature documentary of the same name). Their first book, Naked on the Internet, was published by Seal Press in 2007 and in that same year they won a Feminist Porn Award for Best Bisexual Scene with their directorial debut The Bi Apple.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 11, 2014
I read a quote the other day about untold and marginalized stories that seems particularly relevant here: "The more stories that are told, the less they can all be the same." In this collection, the diversity of voices and writing styles makes each piece seem personal, grounded, and real. While the memoir-heavy collection contains common themes and motifs, especially ones that form part of dominant narratives about sex workers, what really stands out in each story is the storyteller's voice and the specificity of her experience.
One of my favorites in this collection is "Joy. To the World" by Dragonfly, which is a meditation on her style of domination. She employs a series of rhetorical questions to interrogate the reader's preconceived notions of domination and submission:
"Could a golden shower potentially become a baptismic ritual of reward and redemption? Is cross-dressing a secret ceremonial celebration of the unattended feminine psyche within the repressed middle-aged heterosexual male? Is it possible that the taboo and traditionally exploitative practice of financial domination could become an incubator for revolutionary divestment and ethical generation of abundance?"
And she concludes with a benevolent blessing: "In the name of spirituality, sensuality, and sexuality, I bid you kinky blessings, because everyone and everything deserves to cum. Awomen." Joy expresses herself and her woman-positive ethos through her writing with beauty, grace and a sense of humor.
Self-expression and the telling of one's own story in one's own words takes ultimate precedence throughout the collection, but the moments of connection with others occasioned by the storytellers' work are equally poignant. The best example of this is "Old Man Douglas," by Elle Stanger, a story about a strip club patron, "a sixty-something man who looked two decades older. Born Jewish in the South, he was now a Buddhist in the Pacific Northwest. He walked everywhere through Portland in his floppy hat, and never drank more than a few sips of whiskey on ice. He gave gentle, deliberate hugs." Her story of their relationship through her pregnancy and his illness and eventual passing shows how someone who sees the greatness in us can change the way we think about ourselves.
Each story or poem in this collection is about sex work, but these stories show that sex work is much more than the cultural ideas we have of it, because each of these writers is a person with her own experiences, ideas, and relationship to her work. I loved getting to know these women through their writing.
One of my favorites in this collection is "Joy. To the World" by Dragonfly, which is a meditation on her style of domination. She employs a series of rhetorical questions to interrogate the reader's preconceived notions of domination and submission:
"Could a golden shower potentially become a baptismic ritual of reward and redemption? Is cross-dressing a secret ceremonial celebration of the unattended feminine psyche within the repressed middle-aged heterosexual male? Is it possible that the taboo and traditionally exploitative practice of financial domination could become an incubator for revolutionary divestment and ethical generation of abundance?"
And she concludes with a benevolent blessing: "In the name of spirituality, sensuality, and sexuality, I bid you kinky blessings, because everyone and everything deserves to cum. Awomen." Joy expresses herself and her woman-positive ethos through her writing with beauty, grace and a sense of humor.
Self-expression and the telling of one's own story in one's own words takes ultimate precedence throughout the collection, but the moments of connection with others occasioned by the storytellers' work are equally poignant. The best example of this is "Old Man Douglas," by Elle Stanger, a story about a strip club patron, "a sixty-something man who looked two decades older. Born Jewish in the South, he was now a Buddhist in the Pacific Northwest. He walked everywhere through Portland in his floppy hat, and never drank more than a few sips of whiskey on ice. He gave gentle, deliberate hugs." Her story of their relationship through her pregnancy and his illness and eventual passing shows how someone who sees the greatness in us can change the way we think about ourselves.
Each story or poem in this collection is about sex work, but these stories show that sex work is much more than the cultural ideas we have of it, because each of these writers is a person with her own experiences, ideas, and relationship to her work. I loved getting to know these women through their writing.
Displaying 1 of 1 review