Hiding Poverty in the Kitchen

Atender, funny, stunningly candid memoir about the joys and challenges of parenting a neurodivergent young adult that reads like a heady concoction of Dorothy Allison, Anne Lamott, Alison Bechdel and David Sedaris.

＂This book sparkles with life, humor and infinite chutzpah.＂--Michelle Tea, author of Valencia

＂Suzette Partido has written the handbook we’ve been waiting for. Love Will Save Us, Right? is a knockout memoir . . . Essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America’s broken promises while finding beauty in all the broken places. A stunning debut from an exciting new voice in American literature.＂--Ariel Gore, author of Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer

When Suzette Partido’s family receives a shut-off notice due to an unpaid water bill, the timing couldn’t be worse. She’s just left her job to take over round-the-clock caregiving for her neurodivergent child.

Once she finds the money to pay off the bill, Suzette sits down and begins to write about her life, one that centers around mental health struggles, special needs parenting, and ＂the infallible exhaustion of queer love.＂ That essay grew into this groundbreaking memoir, destined to become a modern classic.

In an irreverent, time-traveling coming-of-age story about family, love, and resilience, Partido strikes a balance between two perspectives -- motherly and subversive. She engages her readers in an easy intimacy, bringing them along with her on the relentless pursuit of safe harbor for her family while navigating a revolving door of struggle, exasperation, kindness, community, and laugh-out-loud naughtiness, wrapped in a promise of unyielding love.

Suzette Partido has worked as a community developer and non-profit organizer for three decades. She trained as an AIDS chaplain, street outreach worker, substance abuse counselor, reproductive health educator, volunteer coordinator, and public speaker. She served a large urban liberal congregation for more than thirteen years and, before retiring, managed an HHSA community liaison for children’s public behavioral health and served as the Director of Education for a local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She lives with her neurodivergent young adult son and her wife inside a ten-by-ten canvas tent in her mother’s backyard in San Diego, CA.