Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"The book I wish I'd had growing up." --Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name

Best Books of 2019: Esquire O, The Oprah Magazine Variety Lit Hub Book Riot Electric Literature Autostraddle
Finalist: NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Lambda Literary Award
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Selection
Paste Best Memoirs of the Decade
Elle Best Books of the Season
Washington Post Best Books of the Month
Indie Next Pick Indies Introduce Pick

"A fearless debut." -- New York Times
"[A] gorgeous reckoning." -- Washington Post
"Flat out breathtaking." -- Lit Hub
"Gripping and gloriously written." -- Elle
"Utterly unforgettable." -- NYLON
"Unnervingly satisfying." -- Oprah Magazine
"Deeply compassionate." --NPR.org
"Truly stunning." -- Cosmopolitan

Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.

As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.

With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.

One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year: Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The Millions, Nylon, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Refinery29, and many more

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

In her debut memoir, Madden seems to fold and unfold the maps of her life thus far, bending time to pin points together in wise and unexpected ways. She divides her book into three sections, which are broken into episodic chapters. Part 1 catalogs her childhood observations of her parents' relationship and impatient yearnings to understand adulthood's mysteries. The second section focuses on Madden's world-expanding teenage years as she attempts to protect her parents through their addictions and difficulties, all while seeking her own identity, taking her own risks, and weathering the frightening vulnerabilities of young womanhood. Madden devotes her book's final section to deepening familial discoveries that are too continuously surprising, and too exquisitely told, to risk sharing here. Although the loss of her father and the theme of fatherlessness permeate Madden's telling, it's as much in tribute to her mother, a Hawaiian native, and to her own evolving understanding of femininity as a lesbian, a writer, and her parents' child. A tale of an artist's journey that showcases the coexistence of familial love and complication with such shattering grace, understatement, and openness, Madden's wholly original first book joins unforgettable memoirs like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (2006), Melissa Febos' Abandon Me (2017), and Kiese Laymon's Heavy (2018).--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

An acclaimed essayist's memoir about finding personal redemption in female friends and lovers after growing up in a wealthy but dysfunctional Florida family.Born out of wedlock to a white shoe mogul father and a Chinese-Hawaiian ex-model, Madden was a lonely child who longed for "love the size of a fist." To comfort herself, she wrote stories about an alter ego named Joni Baloney and developed a pen-pal relationship with a 51-year-old man who found her through an ad she had placed in TigerBeat magazine. Her parents began living together, and eventually, Madden's father moved her and her mother from Coconut Grove to Boca Raton. The union granted the author access to privileges that included an exclusive private school education, riding lessons, and horses of her own. However, living with her father also brought her face to face with his alcoholism. The rampages that sometimes resulted often meant brutal beatings for her mother, who developed her own addiction to painkillers. While her parents suffered in an unstable relationship, Madden struggled to find sustaining friendships and love among the drinking, drugging, silver-spoon youths of Boca Raton. For a brief time, she became part of what she calls "the tribe of fatherless girls," a small group of fierce female outcasts who showed her the affection she lacked at home while unexpectedly stirring queer longings the author did not realize she had. In her late teens, Madden moved to New York City. There, she studied fashion design and pursued lesbian relationships that not only helped her heal, but also face the challenges of losing the father she loved and discovering the older half sister her mother had given up for adoption more than a decade before Madden's birth. Though the author's aching emotional rawness sometimes makes for difficult reading, this is a deeply courageous work that chronicles one artist's jaggedand surprisingly beautifulpath to wholeness.Affecting, fearless, and unsparingly honest. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.