Frank, funny and revealing of relations between—and among—the sexes.
A 30-something comedic actress explores her sexual orientation.
Attracted to women from a young age, as an adult, Azzoni found herself not only a card-carrying member of the Brooklyn lesbian community, but, after claiming the Miss Lez beauty-pageant title, its veritable poster child. “I couldn’t have been gayer,” she writes. “I cat-sat, drank herbal tea, and in high school played field hockey. I’d been both vegan and vegetarian. I was a food co-op member. I drove a stick shift. As a kid I undressed Barbie and Skipper and made them kiss and touch boobs. I was even allergic to nuts.” Consequently, the author was shocked when, one day in yoga class, the embrace of her yoga instructor left her breathless with desire for him. That brief encounter ignited Azzoni’s curiosity to become intimately involved with men. In often-hilarious detail, the author recounts her daring voyage into the dizzying cosmos of hetero dating. What sets this account apart from the typical mildly ironic coming-of-age chick-lit memoir is Azzoni’s bald examination of how acting on this “newfound man-lust” would rock not only her sense of self but her station in the gay community: “What if I were truly attracted to men?” she writes. “Would I still have a place in my world? Could I betray the very people who had cheered me on as Miss Lez? I was reluctant to forfeit the rewards of coming out in the first place.” Readers will appreciate the candor of the author’s admission to fearing that her attraction to men might drive her back into the closet with the very friends who, like her, had struggled to get out of it.
Frank, funny and revealing of relations between—and among—the sexes.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58005-361-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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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