Gay Biographies & Memoirs

Audre Lorde, best known for her gifted poetery and essays, leaves us with this striking autobiography of her early years as a writer, and as a struggling black lesbian in NYC. Slowly, through gentle inflections of her Grenadian roots and...
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A strong voice in both African-American women's literature and lesbian literature, Audre Lorde is likely someone as alien to my experience as anyone could possibly be. Well, at least someone who was born and raised in the U.S. At first, I found...
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A correspondent typed to me a couple of weeks ago, "Hello in Mississippi!" and then remarked how much fun the word was to type. It is also a fun word to say, especially if (unlike many of the natives) you pronounce all four syllables. For an...
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I can't believe this is getting such great reviews from people, it is so boring. The first perhaps third of the book about Sessums' family, how they shaped him, his parents deaths and growing up in the bigoted south is interesting, but the entire...
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"Mississippi Sissy" is a book I wanted to like, but didn't. I was made to believe by things I read on line that this was going to be a murder story in the same vein as "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," which it decidedly is not. The...
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A wonderful, warm, funny and touching story of how Dan and his boyfriend Terry came to adopt little D.J. As a gay man whose best friends adopted their own little boy last year, the book spoke to me directly and truthfully about the hopes,...
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So what? Dan Savage is gay and adopting, does he have to write a book about that? Just because he's a writer and has means to find a publisher to pubish his otherwise mediocre book? Don't be mistaken, I'm gay and we're going through the...
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Dan Savage is a smooth and winning writer, but this exploration of his adoption is pretty facile. Savage is frequently glib, and even though this glibness is indeed very funny, it doesn't allow for a lot of thought-provoking material. I also...
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Bravo Jim McGreevey. You are a brave man by coming out and forward as a Gay American! Books like this memoir and stories like these of gay men remaining closeted and heterosexually marrying will continue until society hears from these individuals...
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Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's The Confession (2006), "written with David France," has the sort of bland, generic tone one would expect from an autobiography that is very likely a product of ghostwriting.

From childhood...
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I've always been a fan of Jim McGreevy's, and I was anxious to dive into this book, especially being a gay man. Now that I've finished it, I have to say that I'm a little polarized about it. What I was hoping for: a real in-depth look at...
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Not just a simple retelling of an incident of passion, Delane Daugherty weaves together a story of heartbreak; a real-life legal battle like the ones that are occuring every day in our society; ostracation to small, less than gay-friendly town;...
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Fantastic book. Excellent narrative that manages to cover some themes and topics that aren't necessarily well-documented (the 90's, drag queen culture, NY scene) while covering themes and topics that are universal (the dynamics of loving people...
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This book has some very funny moments (the drag queen shooting candy out of her butt had me rolling) but the brunt of the book was a disappointment. The author seems to string a bunch of exaggerated one liners together to impress rather than...
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My book club chose this book, but I am glad I read it. While I would not have chosen a story that dealt so deeply with the life of a drag queen, I have to admit that I learned much about that lifestyle and one's desire to do it.

This...
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Being a gay Christian youth, I cannot describe the angst I shared with Mel and his early years. This thorough, engaging autobiography reaches out to Americans, both gay and straight, across the country and shows them how distorted a doctrine of...
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Mel White was raised in a Christian home but found himself endowed, apparently through no fault of his own or those around him, with an interest in men rather than women. The church told him his desires were wrong, and he needed to change. But...
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I bought this book with a sense of urgency, an undeniable need to read about someone who has faced (and overcome)similar struggles with reconciling a relationship with Jesus Christ and one's sexuality. I found Mel White's book to be honest and...
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This book is extremely well written. Isherwood -- a gifted biographer -- effectively captures sleazy underbelly of the porn industry and the utter hopelessness of the too-short life that was Joey Stefano's. A must-read for those interested in...
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Isherwood begins with the famous words of Dr. Samuel Johnson, "All excellence has a right to be recorded", and while this is solid enough justification for the biography, his execution of the task is far from excellent. This is not for lack of...
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in fact i don't really like the book, but there is something which is really make me feel sorry with this guy. that is the part when stefeno was asked to write down all his problems, and he simply wrote down: No job No money No self-esteem No...
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