MY OWN DEVICES

This is a gorgeously written memoir - witty and brilliant and moving - about Dessa's life on the road as a touring musician, the great leap of faith required to commit yourself to your art, and her struggle to fall out of love with someone in her band. Think Carrie Brownstein meets Maggie Nelson meets Melissa Bank.

I started rapping seriously, if inexpertly, at about the same time I fell in love (also seriously and inexpertly).

Dessa defies category--she is an academic with an international rap career; a lyrical writer fascinated by behavioral science; and a funny, charismatic performer dogged by blue moods and a perseverant case of heartache. She grew up in Minneapolis as the daughter of a glider pilot and a Bronx-born cattlewoman. She now splits her time between New York City, Minneapolis, and a tour van cruising at 5 miles above the posted limit.

Dessa's on-stage and backstage stories are offset by her inner life of varied fascinations--she studies sign language, algebra, neuroanatomy--and this debut memoir is full of philosophical insights, and an abiding tenderness for the people she tours with and the people she leaves behind to do it. A prism of her intellectual life, MY OWN DEVICES is infused with fascinating bits of science and sociology--readers learn how animals are tested for self-awareness, how free divers empty their lungs before submerging, and how human dance moves might be indicators for reproductive fitness.

Dessa has been praised as "enchanting" (Chicago Tribune), and a "dynamic presence" (Village Voice); and MY OWN DEVICES is "as forceful and whip-smart as everything else Dessa sings, speaks, raps, and writes" (Stephen Thompson, NPR). Uncompromising and eclectic, she finds unconventional approaches to all of her subjects--braiding her lived experience with academic research and a poet's tone and timing. In the vein of thinkers who defy categorization, we get the debut of a deft, likable, and unusual voice.

Dessa is a rapper, a singer, and a writer with a hip hop crew called Doomtree. The seven-member collective has traveled the country and the world together sharing hotel beds, spotlights, and head colds. She's landed on the Billboard Top 200 list as a solo artist (Parts of Speech) and as a Doomtree member (All Hands). She has made her career by bucking traditional genre designations--rapping at rock festivals, co-composing for a full choir, and founding the all-female a cappella group The Boy Sopranos. As a writer, she's contributed to The New York Times Magazine, MPR, the Star Tribune, MN Monthly, literary journals around the country, and has published two short collections of her own.