About the Book

From iconoclastic writer and musician Adele Bertei comes a wholly original hero's journey that wages war on the cliché of the “misery memoir.” Set in a 1960s and ’70s American neighborhood rife with poverty and violence, fatherless Irish mothers and Italian mobsters, and women crucified into madness by misogyny, Bertei speaks through her electrically alive avatar Maddie Twist to flip the victim script. Through her unshakable belief in imagination, poetry, music, and community, she transforms trauma into survival. The immediacy of Maddie’s voice is a revelation, providing insight into long-enduring systemic problems without the scrim of adult analysis. In an age of lies and obfuscation, Twist is a sharp yet tender arrow to the heart of naked truth.

Bertei reveals what it's like to be a queer teen at a time when discovery could be fatal. Maddie peers deeply into the American psyche, refusing to consent to the systems of harm. Along the way we encounter an unforgettable schizophrenic mother, Catholic saints, West Side Story and Oliver!, poet killers, the abyss of rape, girl-gangsters and faux-pimps, teenage lesbian sex, racial tensions and misconceived divides, a drag family known as the Holy Maudlins, Vietnam vets in dark and light, cabaret, true family, rock and roll. And the ultimate saving grace: love.

A compelling personal history of queer culture from a working-class view and a glimpse into worlds yet unseen, Twist is good medicine: for readers who've experienced similar traumas, for teens caught in the foster care system, for the formerly incarcerated looking for hope, for writers grappling with how to tell their own stories. Most of all, it’s for everyone seeking transportive experiences in art and on the page.

Praise for Twist

“Underground legend Adele Bertei’s roman a clef is like something out of the darkest pages of Charles Dickens. Her heroine Maddie Twist is born into a family racked by poverty, violence and madness and graduates to abusive foster care, the terrors of life as a teenage runaway and imprisonment in reform school. But Maddie is a survivor, as much Artful Dodger as she is victim. She rides the turbulent waves of the 1960s and early ’70s with reckless courage, buoyed by her careening high spirits and an almost mystic faith in poetry, music and the love of other girls.  An unforgettable queer coming of age story and an inspiration to outsiders everywhere.”

—Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, Alias Grace, and I Shot Andy Warhol

“A veteran musician recalls her rough coming-of-age experiences in Cleveland in the 1960s and ’70s . . . A picaresque tale, full of vivid characters . . . Maddie narrates with a zest and objectivity probably only possible from a long temporal remove, and she excels at bringing readers deep into the difficult circumstances of her life . . . Throughout the book, Maddie comes across as curious, impulsive, and observant, fond of losing herself in books and brought to life by the music she hears—and creates. A powerful look at survival and redemption despite extremely challenging obstacles.”

—Kirkus (starred review), Best Nonfiction of 2023

“Bracingly candid and stylishly written.”

—David Smith, The Guardian

“Twist is one of the most original, amazing stories I’ve ever read—a story of innocence and brutality, of courage and faith and luck. It is the story of an extraordinary woman-child in an extraordinary time, of devils and angels, trolls under the bridge and unexpected helpers. For all the pain and misfortune in the early life of the intrepid narrator, it is most of all about the connective, transformative power of art and soulful community. Twist is strong and strange poetry; while reading it you may hear music in your head—I did.”

—Mary Gaitskill, author of The Mare, Bad Behavior, and The Devil’s Treasure

“Twist is a dark, demented, horrific and hilarious shot to the heart of American girlhood. Adele Bertei was gender fluid before gender even entered the lexicon. Her writing is miraculous, but the bigger miracle may be that the author survived to write it. And lucky for us she did. This is a book to love.”

—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and Nein, Nein, Nein!

“This raw, vivid work brings readers into a life of poverty, domestic violence, mental illness, war, and trauma . . . Readers travel with her through her coming-of-age experiences, such as being shunned and punished for her attraction to other girls. She also candidly shares her experiences of sexual violence. After aging out of the foster-care system, the author stumbles but finds her footing in the family she forms with her drag-queen neighbors, her boss at the thrift store, and her love for music and writing. VERDICT Bertei's childhood is harrowing, and her memoir does not hold back on the details, which are horrific at times. But the author sounds her voice loudly in this book, and her sense of self is captured throughout the pages. The end result is likely to captivate readers.”

—Rebekah Buchanan, Library Journal

“Fascinating…. Twist is beautifully written in crystalline prose without judgment or stigmatization. What carries her through is music and singing and Bertei writes memorably about both. This is a story about a gay teenager in the 1960s and early 70s at a time, and in institutions, which had little understanding and less tolerance for gay youth. There are episodes of horrifying brutality and violence against Bertei. Yet the great accomplishment of Twist is that it ends on an uplifting and positive note, as Maddie/Bertei becomes herself—the person we know will go on to be a force in the New Wave No Wave scene in New York…. To be placed on your hit parade.”

—Tom Teicholz, Forbes

“Bertei depicts her relationship with her brilliant mother, who was schizophrenic, with uncommon empathy and grace.… Equal parts raucous and harrowing, Twist gives the reader a glimpse of the formation of a singular, uncompromising artist.”

—Brendan Dowling, Public Library Association

“Once ‘the Devil ran through’ her family, Maddie free falls from institution to institution, growing into her queerness and discovering her fate—that ‘God has to be music.’ This riveting novel/memoir by underground icon Adele Bertei situates the making of a survivor rebel against the background of the chaotic side of 1960’s America. An honest, hard times page turner filled with heart and revelation.”

—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show and Conflict Is Not Abuse

“A harrowing voyage through the cultural tornado of America in the latter part of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a thoroughly 21st century girl. This book gives serious credence to the expression ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Very inspirational.”

—Rufus Wainwright 

“Fascinating, candid, informative, intimate, insightful, emotional, deftly crafted, intensely personal, Twist: An American Girl is one of those life stories that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Of special relevance to readers with an interest in LGBTQ biographies and memoirs…Very strongly recommended for community and academic library American Biography/Memoir collections.”

—Midwest Book Review, Reviewer’s Choice 

“Twist spins a bruising tale of the desperate need to break free from the shackles that bind by finding a perverse beauty in the devastating landscape of the American traumazone of poverty, prejudice and familial insanity. Heartbreaking, yet remarkably ever hopeful.”

—Lydia Lunch

“What I fell in love with most about Adele Bertei’s fearless memoir is the strange certainty of its voice, even when—especially when—it is that of a young child. It’s a certainty of her own judgment, one honed without classic guidance. A certainty that never once cedes to accommodate cruelty or intolerance. It is Bertei at her core: uncompromising, a place she came to wholly on her own.”

—Stephanie LaCava, author of I Fear My Pain Interests You

“Truth can sometimes be even stranger than fiction. Twist is so well written that the reader admires the capability of Adele Bertei to present her true story in such a novel way…. By creating her persona of Maddie Twist and her utterly honest and truly poetic expression of reliving her teenage years, Bertei not only holds to her truth but captivates the reader with the way she expresses it. The way it is written makes you truly believe you are reading fiction along with the abrupt realization that this all really happened to Bertei. It is revelatory.”

—The Rage Monthly

“Twist is as innovatively told as it is harrowing and hopeful.”

—David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy

“Adele Bertei always came across as a magnificent talent to those of us who met her when she came to Birmingham in 1981 to play alongside the left feminist and anti-racist punk 'n reggae musicians of the time. With Twist, she reveals her literary talent, producing a sharp and incisive critique of the foster family and institutional care system for estranged young people in the US in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and as it surely is today.”

—Angela McRobbie, author of The Aftermath of Feminism

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