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- With Darling Days, iO Tillett Wright takes us right to where great storytelling lives. A terrific, terrific book.
A Memoir
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. Darling Days is a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to.
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. Darling Days is a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years.
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. Darling Days is a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years. Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self.
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About iO Tillett Wright
iO Tillett Wright is an artist, activist, actor, speaker, TV host and writer. iO’s work deals with identity, be it through photography and the Self Evident Truths Project/We Are You campaign or on television as the co-host of MTV’s Suspect. iO has exhibited artwork in New York and Tokyo, was a featured contributor on Underground Culture to T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and has had photography featured in GQ, Elle, New York Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. iO is also a regular speaker at universities. A native New Yorker, iO is now based in Los Angeles.
Praise
“An earnest and heartfelt memoir cloaked under a battle-toughened exterior.” —Kirkus Reviews
“It’s already a rare and wonderful thing to have a great story-but a unique and compelling voice to tell it with is even rarer … A terrific, terrific book.” —Anthony Bourdain
“Reading Darling Days I’m reminded of what I liked best in Patti Smith’s Just Kids. In brutally honest and passionate prose, iO presents the blossoming of an artist, this time in the eighties, on New York’s Lower East Side.” —Mitchell Kaplan, Books and Books
“iO Tillett Wright is nothing short of a force of nature—an artist, an activist, and a survivor. iO has packed a lot in her young years and in this extraordinary memoir has created something brave and true, as devastating as it is inspiring.” —Jill Soloway, Emmy-award winning creator of Transparent
Discussion Questions
1. iO’s Ma is a dominating figure in the book—a character with many shades. How did iO present Ma here? Did your opinion and perception of her change throughout the book?
2. iO grew up in troubled circumstances and struggled significantly to meet basic needs. What resources or strategies do you see iO develop in order to cope with these circumstances?
3. Discuss your feelings about the ethics of memoir-writing. Would you ever write about your family and, if so, would you try to publish the work? Would you allow your relatives to read your memoir before it was published?
4. The obligations owed to family members is a powerful recurring theme throughout the memoir. How did you feel that various family members—and iO—lived up to or failed to live up to these obligations? And what challenges of being a parent, and of being a child, were highlighted here?
5. How would you describe iO’s journey of navigating gender and sexuality? How central was this element of the memoir for you?
6. Discuss the role of self-presentation in the book, of one’s public versus private image. Which characters brought this difference to life for you most powerfully?
7. Which of iO’s relationships and friendships had the most impact for you as a reader and what did you take from them?
8. Try to imagine the author’s process of re-creating these distinct periods from the past, especially those from early childhood. How would you go about undertaking this task of imaginative re-creation if you were faced with it? How reliable is one’s memory of events from childhood?
9. Discuss the role of setting and place and, especially, the Lower East Side in the nineties. What did iO do to render a vibrant sense of place—what details or anecdotes particularly captured the scene for you?
10. Darling Days is explicitly compared to Just Kids in one of the comments on the book’s jacket. If you’ve read that book, how apt do you think that comparison is? If you haven’t read that book, what other memoirs would you compare Darling Days to?
| Born | September 2, 1985 (age 35) New York City, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Occupation |
iO Tillett Wright is an American author, photographer,[1][2][3][4][5] TV and podcast host, and activist.[6][7][8] After growing up in New York City, he founded street art magazine Overspray and served as its editor-in-chief until 2009. At the age of 22, he became a featured columnist for T Magazine, where he had two regular blogs. In 2016, he began co-hosting MTV show Suspect along with Nev Schulman.
His first book, Darling Days, A Memoir, was released on September 27, 2016. In 2019, Wright produced and hosted the podcast The Ballad Of Billy Balls, in which he solved the murder of the love of his mother's life. The show was widely regarded as among the best of 2019 and has been optioned by Touchstone for television development, to be produced by Tillett Wright, Jenni Konner and Jon Hamm and co-written by Tillett Wright. Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America was published on September 15th, 2020, by Prestel, and Oasis: Modern Desert Homes Around The World, has been published on November 10th, 2020 by Clarkson Potter.
Io Tillett Wright Real Name
Early life[edit]
Wright grew up in New York City with his mother, Rebecca Wright, a poet and actress.[9][10][11][12] Wright is a transgender man.[13] He documented the extreme circumstances of his upbringing in his memoir Darling Days.[14][15]
Career[edit]
Editor[edit]
In 2002, at the age of 17, Wright founded and served as editor-in-chief of a street art magazine, Overspray,[16] until 2009.[17]
Blogger and writer[edit]
At 22, Wright became a featured columnist for T Magazine, at The New York Times where he had two regular blogs called Notes From The Underground—for which iO reviewed underground performances—and The Lowdown.[18]
Wright's first book, Darling Days, A Memoir[19] was released on September 27, 2016, by Ecco Books, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Wright's second book, Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America, has been published on September 15, 2020, by Prestel.
Wright's third book, Oasis: Modern Desert Homes Around The World, has been published in November, 2020, by Clarkson Potter.
Speaker[edit]
In 2012, Wright delivered a talk at TEDxWomen in Washington, DC, called Fifty Shades Of Gay,[20] discussing sexuality and gender as a spectrum. The talk has been viewed over 3 million times.[21] Wright has given keynote lectures at Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Nike, Postmates, The Atlantic summit, and countless others.
Photographer[edit]
Wright is a self-taught photographer, whose first camera was a Pentax KX.[22]
Wright's photographs appeared on the cover of The New York Times magazine in August 2010, marking the beginning of his public photography career.[citation needed] On September 22, 2010, Wright opened Breedings, his first solo show of photographs, at Fuse Gallery in Manhattan. In August 2011, Wright debuted Camila, his second solo show, and Act Like You're Fine, a group show he curated at Tokyo's Vacant Gallery.
Since 2010, Wright has been working on a project called Self Evident Truths that examines Americans, asking them whether they are 'other than straight', and photographing respondents who self-evaluate themselves to be 'anything other than 100% straight'.[23] To date, Wright has photographed 10,000 people in all 50 of the United States.[24] On September 15, 2020, a monograph, called 'Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America' that includes all ten thousand images, has been published by Prestel, with a foreword by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
He is an avid participant and organizer within Black Lives Matter.
Television personality[edit]
In 2016, Wright began co-hosting the MTV show Suspect with Nev Schulman.[25][26][27]
In 2017, Wright was a co-host with Max Joseph, on MTV's TV show, Catfish: The TV Show Season 6 Episode 6.[28]
Actor[edit]
As an actor, Wright appeared in numerous independent films, on Sex and the City, and after an almost decade long hiatus, the feature film Holy New York.[citation needed]
Podcast & Scripted Television[edit]
In 2019, Wright produced and hosted 'The Ballad Of Billy Balls', a true crime investigation of the murder of the love of his mother's life. Created with Zac Stuart-Pontier and Marc Smerling, creators of Crimetown, The Jinx, and more, the show takes listeners on a deeply personal journey through crime, catharsis, and love. In 2020 the show was optioned by Touchstone for development into a television mini-series, to be produced by Jenni Konner and Jon Hamm, produced and co-written by Wright.
Personal life[edit]
Wright moved to California in 2013. He is married to fashion hair stylist Rachel Lee Wright.
References[edit]
- ^Goldin, Nan (October 6, 2016). 'iO Tillett Wright'. InterviewMagazine.com. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^Felsenthal, Julia. 'iO Tillett Wright on Chronicling His Gritty Childhood in Darling Days'. Vogue. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^Baritaux, Zio (September 28, 2016). 'iO Tillett Wright Has Identified As a Boy, a Girl, and a Man, and Traces His Gender-fluid Journey in a New Memoir'. i-D.Vice.com. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^iO Tillett Wright (January 2013). 'iO Tillett Wright's TED Talk'. TED.com. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Shades of Gay'. The New York Times blog 6th Floor. July 19, 2011. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Artist and activist iO Tillet Wright is helping to smash stereotypes'. Huck Magazine. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Civilities: 8 LGBT names to know in 2016'. Washington Post. January 18, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Kennedy, Rose (March 7, 2012). 'Photographer iO Tillett Wright Intends to Capture the Humanity of the LGBT Community in Self-Evident Truth Project'. Metro Pulse. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014.
Wright, 26, grew up as a female in Manhattan
- ^Wright, iO Tillett (March 17, 2017). 'Op-Ed: A transgender child's dilemma: When to go, and where'. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
the attendance sheet told them I was assigned female at birth
- ^Tuttle, Kate. 'iO Tillett Wright's coming-of-age tale as transgender man'. BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^Filgate, Michele (September 28, 2016). ''Darling Days': His anatomy said girl. His reality said boy'. Washington Post. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^Abbott, Alysia (October 10, 2016). 'Questioning Gender Amid a Chaotic East Village Childhood'. The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- ^Baritaux, Zio (September 28, 2016). 'io tillett wright has identified as a boy, a girl, and a man, and traces his gender-fluid journey in a new memoir'. i-D. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
- ^Ossad, Jordana. 'Meet Nev Schulman's 'MTV Catfish' Co-Host iO Tillett Wright'. mtv.com. Viacom International Incorporated. Retrieved June 8, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Who's who in these Nan Goldin photos?'. uk.phaidon.com. Phaidon. Retrieved June 8, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Tillett Wright, iO. 'About Me'. darlingdays.com. iO Tillett Wright. Retrieved June 8, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Fifty Shades of Gay'. 5election. Retrieved May 17, 2020.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'IO Tillett Wright'. T Magazine Blog. The New York Times.
- ^'Darling Days'. IndieBound.
- ^Wright, iO Tillett. 'Fifty shades of gay' – via www.ted.com.
- ^Wright, iO Tillett, Fifty shades of gay, retrieved May 19, 2017CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'iO Tillett Wright'. The Citrus Report. Retrieved June 8, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Home'. SELF EVIDENT TRUTHS. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
- ^Serafini, Marisa (October 17, 2016). 'iO Tillett Wright: My Parents Never Once Questioned My Gender'. AfterBuzz TV Network. Archived from the original on February 9, 2017. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
- ^'iO Tillett Wright joins Nev Schulman for MTV's 'Catfish' spin-off 'Suspect' – AfterEllen'. AfterEllen. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^John Panichella (March 1, 2016). 'Nev Schulman and iO Tillett Wright Talk New MTV Show 'Suspect''. J-14. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Non-Binary Artist iO Tillet Wright Joins Catfish's Nev Schulman For 'MTV Suspect' – NewNowNext'. LOGO News. Retrieved May 29, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^''Catfish: The TV Show' Mecca and Tanner - IMDB'. Retrieved November 18, 2020.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
External links[edit]
- Official website
- iO Tillett Wright at IMDb
- Fifty shades of gay, a TED talk by iO Tillett Wright