Go the Way Your Blood Beats

De: Emmett de Monterey

Narrado por: Mateo Oxley

Brought to you by Penguin.

AN EXTRAORDINARILY MOVING AND ORIGINAL MEMOIR OF GROWING UP GAY AND DISABLED IN 1980S LONDON

When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too heavy for his twenty-five-year-old artist parents and their happy, smiling baby.

Growing up in south-east London in the 1980s, Emmett is spat at on the street and prayed over at church. At his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and he loses a stone from the effort of getting up the stairs. At his sixth form college for disabled students, he's told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, if he's gay.

And then Emmett is chosen for a first-of-its-kind surgery in America which he hopes will 'cure' him, enable him to walk unaided. He hopes for a miracle: to walk, to dance, to be able to leave the house when it rains. To have a body that's everyday beautiful, to hold hands in the street. To not be gay, which feels like another word for loneliness. But the 'miracle' doesn't occur, and Emmett must reckon with a world which views disabled people as invisible, unworthy of desire. He must fight to be seen.

©2023 Emmett de Monterey (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

A frank and intimate memoir written with an incredible clear-eyed intensity (Claire Fuller)

The magic of Emmett De Monterey's book is its disarming accessibility. Compulsive reading, unique, this beautifully crafted work is suffused with depth, affection, and remarkable observations. De Monterey is a profoundly gifted writer. (Charlotte Fox Weber)

Astonishing, illuminating and enriching. (Matt Cain)

An Autobiography About the Invisibility of Being Queer and Disabled

What drew me to this book was the title taken from a James Baldwin quote I had heard in his collection of last interviews. I thought, “That would make a great title for a book.” I researched and found Emmett de Monterey’s book which explores the intersectionality and invisibility of being queer, disabled, and Jewish . . . “Three reasons that Hitler would have killed me,” he later said. His story is intimate in its honesty. I’ve worked with the disabled for thirty years and never heard a story, a journey, rather, quite like his. His book is filled with raw emotions and brutal insights. I learned a lot. I highly recommend this book.