GLBT Biographies & Memoirs

 
Things No Longer There
by Susan Krieger
Things No Longer There is a lovingly crafted collection of personal stories about the author’s struggle toward enlightenment while losing her eyesight. It is also about invisible landscapes—places of the heart that linger long after they have disappeared from the world outside. In these ten brief tales and one novella-length intimate drama, Susan Krieger takes us on a series of adventures in vision, a journey both inward and to various parts of the country. We travel with her as she goes birdwatching before sunrise in the New Mexico desert, learns to walk with a white cane, revisits an old love, returns to a summer camp of her youth, and reflects on the nature of blindness and sight. Krieger’s touching memoir explores the ways that outer landscapes may change and sight may be lost, but inner visions persist, giving meaning, jarring the senses with a very different picture than what appears before the eyes. This book will reward both the general reader and those interested in disability studies, feminist ethnography, and lesbian studies.
 

 
Ellen
by Kathleen Tracy
This star bio by entertainment journalist Tracy qualifies as the "real" story of Ellen DeGeneres. The book traces her life from her mother's first and subsequent marriages to the cancellation of Ellen in 1998. Avoiding juicy speculation, Tracy focuses on the mundane details of DeGeneres's crowning as the "funniest person in America" in 1982 and her rise to sitcom fame and failure in the 1990s. Allegations of ego struggles surface in the multiple firings and cast restructuring following Ellen's premiere, but Tracy remains neutral, offering both sides and allowing readers to choose. There is nothing remarkable in this story of a woman caught between studio bias and her own self-defeating actions, but we are left with an awareness of DeGeneres's enduring humor and a hope that she will return to television soon. Most public libraries will want to add this to their collection of celebrity biographies

 
Against a White Sky
by Laurie Stapleton
In Against a White Sky, Laurie Stapleton reveals her experiences with honesty and humor as a gay high school teacher in an "All-American" city.
 

 
Naked in the Promised Land
by Lillian Faderman
While Faderman (To Believe in Women) is well known as the foremother of gay and lesbian studies, few would suspect she was the illegitimate child of a guilt-obsessed single mother, that she tried to please her mom by becoming a movie star or that she worked her way through college as a pin-up girl. Faderman's mother and aunt left Latvia in 1923 to work in New York and send back money to their family. They did, but neither could save their loved ones from Hitler's Holocaust, which tormented Faderman's mother endlessly. Mother and daughter moved to Los Angeles, where they supported each other's fragile mental health with a single dream: Lillian could become a movie star. She took acting classes, suffered various crushes and even endured advances by her mother's suitors, all in a blind stumble to find herself, or at least to escape the burden of her mother's unhappiness. While a guidance counselor steered Lillian back to school, she still had to fumble her own way to a sexual identity. Pre-liberation, this meant cop hassles, job paranoia and fake marriages to gay men, as well as the usual broken hearts. Still, by the end, Faderman became a bigwig at Cal State, with a baby and a lover and a gay studies program.
 

 
The Truth Is...
by Melissa Etheridge
She's not in Kansas anymore! Melissa Etheridge, the gutsy Midwest girl who grew up to be the heartland's gift to rock & roll (and a major gay spokeswoman) tells all in her memoir, The Truth Is.... With a little help from Laura Morton, the bestselling collaborator of Marilu Henner and Joan Lunden, Etheridge sets the record straight about her life on and off the stage, her coming-out drama, and the stories behind her songs
 

 
Love, Ellen
by Betty DeGeneres
Now the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project, Betty DeGeneres travels the country explaining how she came to terms with her daughter's sexuality, and how love and acceptance can transform a family. Love, Ellen is an extension of her warm and much-admired public speaking, providing insight into her own life as well as Ellen's and arguing for further education, compassion, and the passage of antidiscrimination laws.