Sex, Love and Sweet Suicide

Chinese by birth but spiritually Italian, Chin’s strength and tenacity to overcome drugs, liquor, promiscuity and the very real attraction of suicide is a compelling read. Survival is innate as her abandonment in childhood teaches her to do whatever it takes to live. Her adventures take her across America and Canada as a young girl on her own; through the wild disco days, through a myriad of careers – from becoming a mother and wife to her multitude of lovers. And finally, to who she is now – still re-inventing herself. Sex, Love and Sweet Suicide charts Chin’s life from the age of 2 until 55 (she is now 65). She was abandoned by her mother when her Chinese father died and was left to fend for herself whilst being allegedly ‘cared’ for by various charitable institutions until she was fostered by a loving family aged around 7, but this too did not last. Her many early traumatic experiences: found in an apartment beside the dead body of a Chinese man and working as a runner for an opium den at the age of 5, are only two examples of many such episodes which indelibly marked her attitude to life and love.She spent her teenage years as a singer, a go-go dancer and the lover of many men, always moving on or running away when life got tough, as it inevitably did. Living a chaotic lifestyle was her norm until, aged 40, she decided her life had to change. Even then life did not run smoothly. This is a hard-hitting, true account of a difficult life yet it manages to convey hope and humour too. As Chin herself says, she is a survivor.