Tango Lessons: A Memoir

by Meghan Flaherty

Overview

From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut memoir about a young woman learning to dance tango, becoming comfortable in her own skin and in the arms of others
 
Tango was an unlikely choice for Meghan Flaherty. A young woman living with the scars of past trauma, she was terrified of being touched and shied away from real passion. But by her late twenties, she knew something had to change. She dug up an old dream and tried on her dancing shoes.
 
In tango, there’s a leader and a follower, and, traditionally, the woman follows. As Meghan moved from beginner classes to the late-night dance halls of New York’s vibrant tango underground, she discovered that more than any footwork, the hardest and most essential lesson of the dance was to follow with strength and agency; to find her balance, regardless of the lead. And as she broke her own rule—never mix romance and tango—she started to apply those lessons in every corner of her life.
 
Written in wry, lyrical prose, and beautifully enriched by the vivid history and culture of the dance, Tango Lessons is a transformative story of conquering your fears, living your dreams, and enjoying the dizzying freedom found in the closest embrace.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544986633
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/19/2018
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

MEGHAN FLAHERTY has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times; O, the Oprah Magazine; the Paris Review; Psychology Today; and elsewhere. She lives in Palo Alto, California, and Tango Lessons is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Tango Lessons Named one of the Most Anticipated Titles of 2018 by The Rumpus An iBooks Most Anticipated Memoir & Biography of the Summer A Rumpus Book Club Selection One of Charleston City Paper's Hot Summer Reads A Thrillist Best Book of the Year So Far One of HelloGiggles's Life-Changing Memoirs of the Summer “As Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘What a lark! What a plunge!’ Meghan Flaherty has written a wonderful book. Encountering tango, she encountered a series of cultures and histories: that of the dance itself; that of its impassioned students, teachers, and acolytes in New York and elsewhere; that of her own very particular desires. Like a first-rate piece of dance, she’s gotten the proportions right: the small details, the sweep of the whole, the use of space, scenery, the group, and the solo players. She is entertaining, thoughtful, and trustworthy because her self-examination—doubts, insecurities, grief—is never self-indulgent. I caught my breath at the end. Bliss indeed, those last sentences. I can’t wait to read what she does next.” —Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Negroland "A dazzlingly honest, unblinking memoir, it is also deliciously written, authentically romantic and enormous fun to read." —Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell and editor of The Art of the Personal Essay   “Meghan Flaherty is simply an astonishing writer. Brimming with sensuous detail and sophisticated wit, every page of Tango Lessons seduces and rebuffs, beguiles and delights. This is easily one of the finest books ever written about dance, and every bit as graceful as the art itself.” —Bronwen Dickey, author of Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon "In Meghan Flaherty's Tango Lessons, tango plays a role similar to that of the fancy restaurant in Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter...Although Sweetbitter is fiction and Tango Lessons is memoir, the books have a similar tone, a dramatic, Sylvia Plath–like lyricism...Flaherty's writing contains moments of real beauty." —Newsday “Not only is this Flaherty’s triumphant account of overcoming her fears after trauma and learning to follow her dreams and trust in herself, but it’s also a beautiful look at the history of tango itself.” —BookRiot "As lyrically written as the steps she practices." —HelloGiggles "[Tango Lessons] takes Flaherty from humdrum New York City dance studios to an intoxicating subculture that had been thrumming, unbeknownst to her, under the surface of her city all along. That’s not all she discovers, of course—while she’s emphatic that tango isn’t the fishnets-and-stilettos dance of cultural stereotype, it is still powerfully intimate, physical, and sensual. Flaherty lyrically captures the essence of the dance, as well as her stumbling journey into self-discovery, with a bit of toe sucking and bad sex along the way." —Thrillist "You know right away, as a dancer does, that you are in good hands. Like Sweetbitter, this is a memoir of a young woman trying to make it in contemporary New York City. Like H Is for Hawk  and Julie and Julia, it is also portra —

From the Publisher

In this audiobook memoir, Meghan Flaherty narrates her journey from traumatized young adult to young woman glowing with emotional health. In her late 20s, she was desperate to find a way to connect her feelings and her body. So she decided to take tango lessons, the dance of love and seduction. Her lessons opened her to the healing powers of music and movement. However, the momentous nature of this rite of passage is not translated fully to her audio performance, making her impressive story uneven for listeners. Flaherty’s pathway to emotional health is certainly a revelation of how music can heal the soul. But her listeners would better understand her newfound passion if she had injected it into her presentation. E.E.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

★ 2018-04-03
An essayist's debut memoir of how a passion for tango dancing transformed her life.Flaherty took her first tango lessons when she was 16 and studying abroad in Argentina. Ten years later, she was living in New York, unhappily surveying the dismal prospects in both her love life and professional pursuits as an actress. Desperate "to do something, however bold or blind," and longing for human touch, she plunged back into the world of tango. A traumatic childhood that included living with a substance-abusing, man-hungry mother marked the author at her deepest levels. The more she engaged with tango, the more she realized that at the core of her desire to master the dance was a wish to simply "close my eyes and trust." Her first lessons felt like a liberating "insurrection." But later encounters with "the maestro," an older man who sought to school her in tango and a passion she did not want, tested her resolve. Flaherty persisted, and as she improved, she found other teachers who showed her that tango dancing was a dialogue of "betrayals and…broken loves" between two bodies as well as a pathway to a womanhood she had suppressed and ignored. She eventually found her way into the New York underground of tango venues, where she met Enzo, the lover who moved her into greater awareness of a body she had allowed to be led but had not allowed to lead. A fellow "tango nerd"-turned-friend named Marty helped the author evolve. With him, she learned to dance a tango that was a sensual expression of an autonomous woman unafraid to take risks in life and love. Well-researched, eloquent, and entertaining, Flaherty's book is not only a witty, incisive reflection on a beloved dance and its history. It is also an intimate celebration of dance, life, and the art of taking chances.A vibrantly intelligent reading pleasure.

Kirkus Reviews