Books with category Life Stories
Displaying 2 books

I Heard Her Call My Name

2024

by Lucy Sante

An iconic writer's lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was. For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States without ever entirely settling here, she only really felt at home when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s. In that feral moment, she found her people among a band of fellow bohemians picking their way through the wreckage. Some of her friends would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous.

Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But in the deepest sense, she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself. Sante's memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. It is a story with many twists and turns: however necessary and long overdue her embrace of womanhood was, it was nonetheless a fearful business, filled with pitfalls and pratfalls.

Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man's identity, in a man's world. She had found herself, widening the aperture of her heart in the bargain. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.

Ten Bridges I've Burnt

2024

by Brontez Purnell

Ten Bridges I've Burnt: A Memoir in Verse brings forth a wrenching, sexy, and exhilaratingly energetic memoir from the beloved author of 100 Boyfriends, Brontez Purnell. With his unique literary style, Purnell turns his keen gaze inward, crafting a narrative that is as much a collection of genre-defying verse as it is a candid self-exploration.

In this series of thirty-eight autobiographical pieces, Purnell is at his unapologetic best. He vividly recounts events ranging from a ferocious altercation at a poetry conference to the challenges of navigating TV writers' rooms while dealing with personal trauma. Purnell grapples with the legacies inherited from his family, both curses and gifts, and lays bare a whirlwind of experiences that include misadventures and intimate encounters.

Throughout the memoir, Purnell's musings extend to a diverse array of subjects, from love and loneliness to the intricacies of capitalism and Blackness, as well as reflections on physical exercise and the ethics of artistic creation. His writing, marked by a balance of humor and insight that garnered acclaim for 100 Boyfriends, thrives on its unpredictability and fluidity. Ten Bridges I've Burnt stands as yet another testament to Purnell's boundary-pushing creativity, offering a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.

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