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Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, And Rent Boys: Professionals Writing On Life, Love, Money, And Sex (2009)

by David Henry Sterry(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1593762410 (ISBN13: 9781593762414)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Soft Skull Press

review 1: This book is split up into 5 sections (like the title implies...): life, love, work, sex, and money. And under each section several different people (sometimes introduced by David Henry Sterry, sometimes not, which at first made it difficult for me to know when we were switching authors) tell a story somehow involving this theme.Like all anthologies, some stories are better than others. Some stories are hilarious, poignant, tragic, or beautiful, and some make you wonder if maybe your edition has a few pages missing, because you have NO idea what's going on. Some of the stories match their theme better than others; some of the stories are obviously pulled from larger works. A few times (all times written by straight men, interestingly) I was disappointed and all three of... more me -- the woman, the psychologist, and the human -- shook my head and thought "Wow, way to totally miss the point, dude." (It's difficult to explain what I mean by that without basically quoting several large chunks of text, so I won't.)Watch for cameos by Abraham Maslow, and BF Skinner.It's hard to say who to recommend this to. I think people could get many different things out of it depending on their reasons for picking up the book. Some could be good, some might not be. I don't know.And PS: I highly recommend picking up this book in a small town book store where the staff takes glee in yelling the title all over the 2 story building and purposefully scandalizing everyone in there. It very much enhances the experience.
review 2: (Originally published in The Skinny magazine)Do you see what they did there? Despite the wordy title, the editors have managed to steer clear of the terms ‘sex workers’ and ‘prostitutes’, both of which invariably piss somebody off. This tactic is noteworthy, because here we have an anthology bringing together the broadest range of contributors with experience of the sex industry: from the big screen to the street, phone sex to stripping, and incalls to escorting. Between them, they’ve experienced sex work as an empowered choice, as a living hell, as a drug-fuelled necessity. They cover migration, burnout, criminalisation, violence, keeping secrets, coming out to family, and interactions with clients and colleagues. As it happens, some of the brief contributions from well-known names seem least worthy of inclusion, having a whole lot of pride but not a lot of substance; the bulk of the book, however, is made up of personal pieces that delve deep and illustrate the complexities of the writers’ experiences. Alternately eye-opening, funny, moving, and devastating, this book should be required reading for those who still think any kind of sex worker is ‘representative’. less

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