Sex Talks to Girls chronicles the outward antics of a woman on an inward journey to self through the routes of religion, sex, sobriety, and kids. Recasting herself in this memoir as “Molly Meek,” Maureen Seaton interprets the emergence of Molly’s identity in luxurious and very funny prose.

            Molly alternately finds herself in the surprising company of winos, swingers, and drag kings; in love with Jesus H. Christ and a butch named Mars; in charge of two children; writing stories that shrink painfully to poems without her permission; and incapable of figuring out how she landed in any of these predicaments. She is, by turns, a little saint, a Stepford wife, a bi-mom, and a femme with super powers. Her transformation—from near-nun to full-fledged sexual being, accidentally becoming conscious in the process and delighting in the spree—is the story of a life set on play and a woman heroically committed to seeing it through.

 

Maureen Seaton is the author of six poetry collections, including Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen and Furious Cooking. She is the recipient of the Lambda Award, the Audre Lorde Award, the Iowa Prize for Poetry, an NEA fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. She is associate professor of English at the University of Miami, where she teaches poetry and literary collage.

“Seaton compellingly narrates her passage through a host of roles—pious adolescent, Stepford wife, recovering alcoholic, sexual adventurer, and bi mom—on the way to discovering her identity as sober lesbian poet. . . . Fast-paced and engaging.”—Pleiades

“The bumpy, often funny journey of alter ego Molly Meek as she moves from adoration of Jesus to adoration of anything alcoholic to sobriety and artistic success. . . .  Tears, laughter, separations, booze, interracial lesbian love—just like in the movies.”—Booklist