About the Book

When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old iO play ball, he instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky, a choice his parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step. 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 as his family and home life devolve into chaos. 

Now an actor and artist, iO is currently finishing a project to photograph people across the LGBTQ spectrum in every state.

Critical 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. With Darling Days, iO Tillett Wright takes us right to where great storytelling lives. 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 & Books

“iO Tillett Wright is nothing short of a force of nature-an artist, an activist, and a survivor. iO has packed a lot into few 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

“Gender-defying iO Tillett Wright mixes such a high-octane cocktail of radiant ink, wild anecdotes, bad behavior, and gritty truths-topped off with an unexpected tonic of transcendence-it could stagger Charles Dickens, electrify Maxim Gorky, and cause Jane Austen to walk around in army boots.” — Tom Robbins

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780062368218
• ISBN 10: 0062368214
• Imprint: Ecco
• On Sale: 09/12/2017
• Trimsize: 5.310 in (w) x 8.000 in (h) x 0.900 in (d)
• Pages: 400
• List Price: $16.99
• BISAC1 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Fashion
• BISAC2 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Jewish
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers
• BISAC4 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Composers & Musicians
• BISAC5 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical
• BISAC6 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political
• BISAC7 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women
• BISAC8 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
• BISAC9 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Culinary
• BISAC10 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / LGBT