A compelling look at an eventful life.
A biography of a little-known figure in the 20th-century gay rights movement.
In this debut biography, Steele tells the story of his late friendJim Foshee, a gay historian and activist. Foshee was born in 1939 and had a difficult childhood in which he was frequently at odds with his mother, father, and stepfathers and experienced abuse. He ran away from home repeatedly as an adolescent; the book’s title is a reference to when he escaped from Idaho to Los Angeles in 1954 and an LA sheriff later threatened to have him barred from the state. He was also remanded to the Idaho State Mental Hospital more than once—a place to which he felt more attached than his family home. In adulthood, he continued his peripatetic lifestyle, making a living through low-wage jobs and occasional sex work; finally, a minor theft landed him in a Texas state prison for three years. Foshee eventually ended up in Colorado in 1969, where he fell in love and settled down with John Koop Bergmann, who worked for a laundry machine installation company. The two were fixtures in Denver’s gay community, and Foshee got jobs in print and radio journalism and discovered a passion for researching gay history. When Bergmann died of cancer in 1980, shortly after the two moved to California, Foshee was again on his own, and because their relationship had no recognized legal status at the time, he was relegated to the status of “friend” at his partner’s funeral. Foshee returned to Denver but soon began moving from place to place, mainly between California and Arizona. He continued his involvement in gay activism and historical research through his last decades before his death in 2006.
Foshee’s own words are the core of this book, with quotes from interviews making up much of the text. They’re linked by former journalist Steele’s own narration of the events of Foshee’s life, which adds a sense of structure and effectively places the events in historical and cultural context. However, Foshee proves to be a thoughtful observer of his own journey, giving the reader an intimate look at the choices he made and the paths he followed and the reasons why he did so. Steele’s excellent organization of his biography adds further insight, bringing the midcentury life of an American gay man into vivid relief and painting a detailed picture of an era when homosexuality was illegal in many parts of the country. The book’s geography is also crucial: “I experienced the actual beginnings of the modern gay rights movement then and there in Los Angeles,” Foshee explains at one point, “so I knew firsthand that the gay movement didn’t begin two decades later at the Stonewall Inn.” Photos and documents from a number of sources, including gay-history archives that Foshee helped to build, add illuminating detail along the way. Overall, Steele does an excellent job of presenting the story of an activist and making it clear why his story matters.
A compelling look at an eventful life.Pub Date: June 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73401-081-7
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Wentworth-Schwartz Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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