NO SON OF MINE

A West Virginia–born writer reflects on how coming into his identity as a gay man led to a painful estrangement from his beloved mother.

Corcoran was his religious mother’s “golden child,” the bright, ambitious son who left their tiny Appalachian town to attend Brown University. His achievements partially made up for her marriage to an unfaithful man who gambled away their money, but when he came out to her at age 20, she disowned him and, suddenly, Corcoran’s past was “wiped clean” of all the “relationships, geographies, histories” he had ever known. All that remained was the present, which included a relationship with a Jewish student named Sam and a desperate desire to fit in among wealthy Brown students while “hold[ing] onto the things [he’d] known” from West Virginia. Corcoran's life post-estrangement was further complicated by calls from his mother that threatened he would die of AIDS and burn in hell. These and other experiences, including her fraudulent use of Corcoran’s credit card for food money, traumatized the author and tested his relationship with Sam. Even after the two moved to New York to build their adult lives together, Corcoran still watched “for her dark shadow to hover over [them] and tsk.” Haunted by their on-again, off-again relationship, the author struggled to make sense of the violent bond that held him and his once-loving mother together, a bond that mellowed after his father died and her own health began to decline. Only then, broken and alone, was she finally able to offer an apology for the “devil that had been inside her.” Skillfully weaving together emotion, memory, and geography, Corcoran creates a memorable narrative tapestry that delves into the dark complexities of love while exploring a gay man’s hard-won path to self-acceptance.

A lyrical and uncompromisingly honest memoir.