Bold, brave and darkly funny, COME is the extraordinary story of Melbourne sex worker Rita Therese and the love, sex and death she has experienced in her life so far.
- Start your review of My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption. Mar 06, 2021 Oscreads rated it it was amazing. Thank you @pantheonbooks #partner for sending a copy of “My Time Will Come” by Ian Manuel.
- A memoir is a deeply personal non-fiction book that you’ll be sharing with strangers. From the beginning, tell your story as if you’re sharing a secret with the reader that you have never told anyone else. This approach makes the reader a confidante and builds trust from the start. Bring emotions out of the reader.
Rita is an escort, one of the best in Australia. It all began on a whim at 18, after she rang the number on a sign looking for nude models. Always the outsider, she quickly learns the sex industry is comprised of many other people just like her and she becomes immersed in this world: the drugs, the late nights, the glamour, being an outcast, the attention and validation from men. Mostly she thrives on how taboo her life has become. Following significant personal tragedy and trauma, the line between Rita's sex worker persona Gia and her real self begins to blur in a seemingly endless loop of grief, work, sex, love and heartbreak.
In this achingly honest memoir, Rita learns that death and trauma do not always bring grand transformative experiences. Sometimes, in order to go forward, we have to write our own stories and choose to keep living. Unflinching, compelling and darkly funny, Come announces a fearless new talent in Australian writing.
The urge to excavate memory does not tend to come from a place of contentment. Add to this that readers may approach the genre with skepticism or a whiff of schadenfreude. A memoir that has. A few months ago my friend Nick Lyons, long admired for books about his passion for fishing, published a beautiful memoir, Fire in the Straw. Reading the book has underscored, in a personal way, the gap between life and literature that so many of us take for granted. Come is brilliant. A memoir of love, death, and sex work, Therese navigates through the topics with such grace I'm not here to judge the quality of Therese's stories—they're her life. But I will say that I enjoyed reading the stories she told, and I enjoyed hearing what she had to say.
Author bio:
Rita Therese is a 25-year-old sex worker, artist and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She entered the sex industry at age 18, and has worked as a stripper, porn and as an escort. She currently works as an escort under the alias Gia James.
She has written for magazines like Frankie, Vice and Penthouse Australia, and had a monthly sex and dating column for Sneaky magazine.
She had her first solo photographic exhibition 'Gemini' in 2016 at Goodspace Gallery in Sydney. The exhibit played on the juxtaposition of light and dark, and was centered around themes of sexuality, kink, femininity and fantasy.
She is also the author of 4 self published zines - Zero Vol. 1 + 2, Heartbreaker and Fantasy. The zines focus on short stories about her life as a sex worker and discuss relationships, love, grief, mental health and sex. She distributes the zines through her Instagram and website.
Rita is currently undertaking her Bachelor of Philosophy and working towards a career as an academic, specializing in the field of Gender Studies with a focus on sex work.
early 15c., 'written record,' from Anglo-French memorie 'note, memorandum, something written to be kept in mind' (early 15c., Old French memoire), from Latin memoria (from PIE root *(s)mer- (1) 'to remember'). The more specific sense of 'a notice or essay relating to something within the writer's own memory or knowledge' is from 17c. Meaning 'person's written account of his or her life' is from 1670s. Related: Memoirist.
Biography, Memoir. When there is a difference between these words, it may be that memoir indicates a less complete or minute account of a person's life, or it may be that the person himself records his own recollections of the past, especially as connected with his own life; in the latter case memoir should be in the plural. [Century Dictionary]
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