A fascinating look into a significant period in the life of a much-loved literary figure.
A new work of nonfiction by a leading force of gay rights activism.
Duberman (Jews Queer Germans: A Novel/History, 2017, etc.) has vast experience with the countless riots and uprisings that took place throughout the 20th century to establish an equal playing field for the gay community across the United States. Here, he takes readers through his varying states of mind as he experienced the 1970s and ’80s as a 40- and 50-something gay man. “What I’d forgotten while entertaining my fantasy of rebirth was how deeply wedded I’d become to security and routine,” he writes. “Nearing fifty, even a malcontent like me had learned that life’s most distinguishing feature was its precariousness.” In fact, after his mother’s death, which took a devastating toll on his psyche, Duberman had to navigate the solitude of adulthood without a parental reference point. Living in New York City during its “glory days,” he was on the front lines of the city’s cultural effervescence. Working as a writer and scholar, he engaged aggressively in cocaine culture—“used in moderation, and for specific occasions only, I told myself, coke confirmed the countercultural cliché about better living through chemistry”—until a violent heart attack gave him pause and an incentive to restructure. He worked hard to re-engage in politics after the election of Ronald Reagan, and he endured the horrors of the AIDS crisis without personally suffering from the disease. While Duberman’s story now feels like one of the many that developed and unraveled during a confusing time in American history, the author’s style and approach to recounting it are novel. Divided into highly specific thematic sections, the book is sharp and engaging, with tasteful anecdotes that anchor Duberman not in a historical lineage but firmly within his own personal journey. This highly intelligent book is not just another contribution to gay history; it is also an important pillar in the author’s literary biography.
A fascinating look into a significant period in the life of a much-loved literary figure.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7070-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
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
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
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