GLBT Biographies & Memoirs

 
Farm Boys
Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest
by Will Fellows
"Farm Boys" is a superb work of American oral history and sociology. Author Will Fellows spoke to rural gay Midwestern men of all ages, to draw out, record and give shape to their life stories. The result is a poignant and revealing mosaic-portrait that shows the rich intersections of farm life, gay culture and the American twentieth century.

 
The Fabulous Sylvester :
The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco
by Joshua Gamson
Hot on the heels of Pam Tent's book on the Cockettes, Midnight at the Palace [BKL N 15 04], Gamson limns another gender-bending San Francisco entertainment phenomenon, whose career arced high without quite denting general national consciousness. Sylvester James Jr. came from nearly all-black South Central L.A. As a teen, he started cross-dressing and sneaking out to glitzy parties. Possessed of a remarkable singing voice, he advanced from the antics of his cross-dressing street-gang-cum-sorority the Disquotays to become immortalized onscreen when a scene in the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose called for a drag Diana Ross. "The producers thought it would be hilarious to have a Diana who tipped the scales at around two-fifty, so Sylvester was hired." The seventies were a cornucopia of glitz and success for Sylvester. When he died of AIDS in 1988, even his funeral was a show full of singing, sermonizing, and an audiotape of the deceased cutting loose--in falsetto, of course--on Christmas carols. "Most people in the church were overcome"; Sylvester would've wanted them to be.
 

Stranger at the Gate
by Mel White
This is the account of a deeply religious man's coming to terms with his gayness and the impact that process had on his life. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, and other religious-right personalities, White offers a compelling story; gay readers raised in a fundamentalist Christian environment will find themselves saying, "That happened to me."
  

 
Fred In Love
by Felice Picano
Picano, a popular writer of gay fiction--author of, most recently, the novel Onyx (2001)--this time around submits a beautifully tender but not maudlin essay about his cat, Fred. Picano was living in New York City when he first encountered Fred, who was only a couple of weeks old. Fred's "education" is chronicled here in selective but fond and telling detail--if a cat can indeed be educated, of course. Fred and the author built a tremendously affectionate relationship based on Picano's eventual realization that, after he and Fred went through a bad spell over Fred's confusion and desire and pining for his one great lady-cat, "All I can do is love him."
 

 
Before Night Falls
by Reinaldo Arenas
This celebrated Cuban writer ( The Doorman , LJ 5/15/91; Singing from the Well , LJ 7/87), a victim of AIDS, committed suicide in New York in 1990. His autobiographical memoir is a fascinating and frightening tale of growing up extremely poor in rural Cuba, of varied personal and political relationships, of rebelliousness, homosexuality, suppression, and persecution. In the picaresque tradition, the narrative is earthy and at times raw; the frequent sexual escapades are presumably true accounts.

 
The Kid
by Dan Savage
Best known for his syndicated sexual advice column, "Savage Love," Dan Savage shares his own story in The Kid, a hilarious account of his efforts--along with his partner--to adopt a child. (Whoops, make that his boyfriend; Savage can't stand the "genderless" P-word: "Straight people and press organs that want to acknowledge gay relationships while at the same time pushing the two-penises stuff as far out of their minds as possible love 'partner.' I hated it.") Savage doesn't give an inch on the sexuality issue; it's hard to imagine that a homophobic reader would even pick up The Kid, but if it happened, Savage's unapologetic presentation of his life would quickly scare that reader off. Which isn't to say that he paints a rosy picture of homosexual cohabitation: the very first scene finds Dan's boyfriend, Terry, locking himself in the bathroom after a fight over the music on the car stereo. The misadventures continue through each step of the open-adoption process, in which Dan and Terry get to know their baby's birth mother, and the first few weeks of parenthood. The Kid is a wonderful, charming account of real "family values" that proves love knows no limits.