num_pages: 176
description: A raw and surprisingly beautiful coming-of-age memoir Coal to Diamonds tells the story of Mary Beth Ditto a girl from rural Arkansas who found her voice. Born and raised in Judsonia Arkansasa place where indoor plumbing was a luxury squirrel was a meal and sex ed was taught during senior year in high school (long after many girls had gotten pregnant and dropped out) Beth Ditto stood out. Beth was a fat pro-choice sexually confused choir nerd with a great voice an eighties perm and a Kool Aid dye job. Her single mother worked overtime which meant Beth and her five siblings were often left to fend for themselves. Beth spent much of her childhood as a transient shuttling between relatives caring for a sickly volatile aunt she nonetheless loved looking after sisters brothers and cousins and trying to steer clear of her mothers bad boyfriends. Her punk education began in high school under the tutelage of a group of teensher second familywho embraced their outsider status and introduced her to safety-pinned clothing mail-order tapes queer and fat-positive zines and any shred of counterculture they could smuggle into Arkansas. With their help Beth survived high school a tragic family scandal and a mental breakdown and then she got the hell out of Judsonia. She decamped to Olympia Washington a late-1990s paradise for Riot Grrrls and punks and began to cultivate her glamorous queer fat femme image. On a whimwith longtime friends Nathan a guitarist and musical savant in a polyester suit and Kathy a quiet intellectual turned drummershe formed the band Gossip. She gave up trying to remake her singing voice into the ethereal wisp she thought it should be and instead embraced its full soulful potential. Gossip gave her that chance and the raw power of her voice won her and Gossip the attention they deserved. Marked with the frankness humor and defiance that have made her an international icon Beth Dittos unapologetic startlingly direct and poetic memoir is a hypnotic and inspiring account of a woman coming into her own.
language: English
title: Coal to Diamonds: A Memoir
publisher: Spiegel & Grau