“If it doesn’t hurt like hell, it ain’t worth a jack shit,” are words from the author’s mother that form the epigraph to Darling Days. Hurt fills the pages, for at the book’s core is a painful mother-daughter relationship, yet humour is also distilled from the pain. The memoir opens with a moving letter from iO to her mother, Rhonna, a showgirl, actress, dancer, a widow by police murder and an addict who slept with a gun under her pillow. Episodically told, this is an immensely evocative portrait of growing up in a tenement building in 80s and 90s New York, surrounded by drugs, violence, homelessness, punk music and art. When the author was six a group of boys refused to let her play so she decided to become a boy. Gender and identity are perceptively explored. The author unflinchingly negotiates “a vortex of damage”, discovering forgiveness and the redemptive powers of art.

Darling Days is published by Virago (£18.99). Click here to buy it for £15.57