Breaking the Curse - Alex DiFrancesco

A tour de force of narrative nonfiction, a reimagining of the self-help genre, and a brave memoir about mystical forces, trauma, trans life, and how we must heal ourselves to survive.
For readers of memoirs by Elliot Page (Pageboy) and Elissa Washuta (White Magic), and fans of writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Samantha Hunt, and Chavisa Woods.
In Breaking the Curse, Alex DiFrancesco takes their own crushing experiences of assault, addiction, and transphobic violence as the starting point for a journey to self-reclamation. Reeling in the aftermath of a rape that played out as painfully in public as in private, DiFrancesco begins to pursue spirituality in earnest, searching for an ancestral connection to magic as a form of protection and pathway to transformation. Propelled by a knowledge of the spiritual role of the transgender person in society, Alex winds through Cleveland and Brooklyn and Philly—from rehab and...