A candid portrait of an indefatigable woman.
Growing up queer in midcentury America.
In 2010, Windsor (1929-2017) sued the United States for recognition of her marriage to a woman, claiming her legal right of inheritance from her late wife’s estate. Her victory in the suit, which catapulted her to fame, marked the transformation of a deeply closeted woman into an outspoken gay rights activist. In a forthright and vivid memoir, written with the assistance of journalist Lyon (Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict, 2009), Windsor reveals her early realization of her attraction to women and her long struggle to navigate homophobia among family members and at work, to live openly as a lesbian, and to marry the woman she loved. After Windsor died, Lyon took over the unfinished project, resulting in “a memoir/biography hybrid” that complements, and often deepens, Windsor’s narrative with information and insights that Lyon uncovered from his continued research. Lyon discovered, for example, that Windsor had a fierce temper, that her skill as a card counter enabled her to win big in casinos, and that she tended to “brush past” painful memories, such as the rift within her family caused by her sexuality. Although Windsor knew she was gay, she married a man who had been a close family friend, thinking she could bury her feelings for women. Soon, however, she rebelled against the charade: “The core of my identity, my natural biological instinct, wasn’t going to change.” Divorced, she moved to Greenwich Village, where she dove energetically into gay social life and sex. “She went through so many women,” a friend told Lyon. At the same time, she embarked on a successful career as a mathematician, writing programs for the UNIVAC computer and eventually developing software at IBM. In the workplace, she deflected matchmakers by pretending to have a boyfriend. In 2007, when she married Dutch-born psychologist Thea Spyer after a relationship of more than 40 years, co-workers asked her why she had lied to them. Windsor’s world had changed dramatically.
A candid portrait of an indefatigable woman.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19513-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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