Unsexed: Memoirs of a Prostitute's Daughter

by Marina DelVecchio

Overview

Unsexed examines the role that sex plays in the life of one woman with two mothers who introduce her to polarized frameworks of female sexuality.

Born in Greece to a violent prostitute and then adopted by a cold and unloving virgin from New York, Marina inherits a sexual identity steeped in fear and shame—one that, as she grows older and becomes a wife and mother, trickles into her marriage and the parenting of her children. Without the tools needed to understand her complex mothers or to unpack the lessons they taught her, Marina relies on self-erasure to survive relationships that silence and define her—until she finally becomes fed up with those old patterns and begins to stand in her own power.

A memoir that unearths the layered emotional and sexual lives of women and exemplifies the satisfaction that comes when they assert their voices and power, Unsexed speaks to millions of women who have different narratives but face similar struggles in reclaiming their voices, bodies, and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647426941
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	07/16/2024
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Marina DelVecchio, Ph.D. is a college professor and writer. In addition to her online publications in MS Magazine, Huffington Post, and The New Agenda, her book publications include Dear Jane, The Professor’s Wife, and The Virgin Chronicles. She teaches women’s studies and literature through the lens of bibliotherapy, guiding her students to connect with literary heroes who write for power and self-assertion. She lives in North Carolina with her children and three feral cats.

Editorial Reviews

…an eye-opening take on sexuality and the intractably complicated politics of a woman’s body.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“. . . exquisite and earthy . . . a brave, brilliant memoir about holistic self-reclamation after childhood abuse.”
—Foreword

“From its opening pages, we know Unsexed is going to offer us vulnerability and wisdom mixed with tragedy, which is a particular kind of unflinching honesty: one that has set aside fear in favor of truth. In this raw and gritty memoir, DelVecchio reveals what it means to be a daughter longing for nourishment, a lover wanting to be respected, and a mother who has unwittingly learned exactly how to love. She never claims to have come out on the other side all shiny and happy, only renewed. Sometimes another person’s story reminds us of the will and strength we all have running deep inside—Unsexed is one of those stories.”
—Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, author of the memoir The Going and Goodbye

“Unsexed is a searingly honest, painful, beautifully expressed and ultimately transcendent story about the damage caused by the absence of love, and the healing that becomes possible with truth and courage.”
—Adrienne Moore, author of Seven Tears in the Sea

“Unsexed is an amazingly honest memoir that's hard to put down. DelVecchio’s ability to render her story with no exaggerations or evasions makes it a page-turning book. The author doesn’t attempt to hide the damage to her own psyche caused by these experiences, and readers will find themselves rooting for her as the book reaches its end. Highly recommended for book clubs, who will find a great deal to discuss.”
— Gabi Coatsworth, author of Love’s Journey Home and A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over

“A searing memoir that carries the reader from trauma to triumph. Marina's struggle to reconcile her past, her sexuality, and her own agency will resonate with any reader from the early ’70s second wave of feminism to the more recent #MeToo movement.”
—Pamela Stockwell, author of A Boundless Place

From the Publisher

2024-04-03
DelVecchio charts her path to autonomy in this wrenching memoir.

As a young girl raised in the milieu of sex work, the author was plagued by questions about female bodies—what value they possess, how they are used, and who controls them. Such questions filled her with trepidation and vigilance regarding her own body. Born in Greece, DelVecchio experienced an early childhood marked by hunger, homelessness, abuse, abandonment, and neglect. After her birth mother stabbed her father in the eye with a red stiletto, he left the family, and her mother’s extramarital sexual relationships gained a new purpose beyond pleasure. A man named Kristos, as DelVecchio recalls, was the pimp under whose direction her mother first sold sex to another man—who paid her with a roasted chicken. Kristos told DelVecchio, “I will teach you to be a woman. A good woman. Like your mother.” An orphanage, though it had its own perils, offered an escape. At the age of 8, the author was adopted and raised in the United States by an American Greek woman (characterized by DelVecchio as a “virgin”) whose sexual compass pointed in the opposite direction from her birth mother’s. The memoir dissects how, as the author was caught between these two extremes, she came to consider herself “unsexed.” In a prologue, DelVecchio writes an achingly earnest and disheartening open letter to the body that she has struggled to feel at home in, almost as if speaking to a lover whom she has equally controlled and spurned. This introduction sets the tone for the excoriating exploration of how that relationship came to be. While the narrative’s structure, centering around her birth mother, adoptive mother, and husband (in order of appearance), is a serviceable setup for this exploration, within each section, chapters often rehash and repeat passages and events. Still, the work remains an eye-opening take on sexuality and the intractably complicated politics of a woman’s body.

A feminist daughter of a sex worker redefines herself in this searching remembrance.

Kirkus Reviews