An unvarnished accounting of one man's struggle toward sexual and emotional maturity.
In this unconventional memoir, Jonathan Alexander addresses wry and affecting missives to a conflicted younger self. Focusing on three years--1989, 1993, and 1996--Dear Queer Self follows the author through the homophobic heights of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Bill Clinton, and the steady advancements in gay rights that followed. With humor and wit afforded by hindsight, Alexander relives his closeted college years, his experiments with his sexuality in graduate school, his first marriage to a woman, and his budding career as a college professor.
As he moves from tortured self-denial to hard-won self-acceptance, the author confronts the deeply uncomfortable ways he is implicated in his own story. More than just a coming-out narrative, Dear Queer Self is both an intimate psychological exploration and a cultural examination--a meshing of inner and outer realities and a personal reckoning with how we sometimes torture the truth to make a life. It is also a love letter, an homage to a decade of rapid change, and a playlist of the sounds, sights, and feelings of a difficult, but ultimately transformative, time.
About the Author :
Jonathan Alexander is a writer and podcaster living in Southern California. His previous creative nonfiction includes Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology; Bullied: The Story of an Abuse; and Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot. He is Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.
Review :
Alexander's searing memoir...offers a deeply honest portrait of life as a complicated young man in the eighties and nineties...The writing is deeply affecting, brutal in its self-evaluation, evocative in its mapping of Alexander's search for self-acceptance...I am deeply grateful to have encountered this book.
-- "Jim Grimsley, author of How I Shed My Skin"
I can't recall the last time I was so moved as I was while reading Dear Queer Self...[This book] is a striking account of the ways we draw strength from tragedy and learn to face our past transgressions with equal parts humor and resilience.
-- "Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime"
The narration is a triumph, establishing instant intimacy. Alexander serves as simultaneous director, guide, and archivist...Dear Queer Self is an intense, daring coming-of-age--and coming out--memoir.
-- "Foreword Reviews (starred review)"
