Synopses & Reviews
The untold personal life story of the novelist whom Gore Vidal has hailed as "one of the few original American writers of the last century." John Rechy's first novel,
City of Night, is a modern classic and his subsequent body of work has kept him among America's most important writers.
Now, for the first time, he writes about his life, in a volume that is a testament to the power of pride and self-acceptance. Rechy was raised Mexican-American in Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely discriminated against. As he grew older and as his fascination with a notorious kept woman from his childhood deepened Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage but in his sexuality. While he performed the roles others wanted for him, he never allowed them to define him whether it was the authoritarians in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not.
About My Life and the Kept Woman is as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path.
Review
"The best parts of the memoir are his reaction to the publication of City of Night, the encounters with his editor Don Allen, as well as those with theater director Wilford Leach...novelist Christopher Isherwood and poet Allen Ginsberg." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"For those readers who already know John Rechy, About My Life and the Kept Woman will provide additional insight. But if you have never read Rechy, go back to his early novels. There you will find a world of possibility and magic and danger." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[H]as all the ingredients for a good memoir....At its best, [Rechy's] prose is serviceable. At its worst, it is trashy." new York Times
Review
"Rechy lived a most unusual existence whose central motive was his effort to grow beyond the world of his Latino family without completely losing its love and support." Library Journal
Review
"Keenly observed and well-written readers will hope that a sequel is forthcoming." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"John Rechy's latest book is a memoir that reads like a novel, complete with cliff-hanging chapter conclusions, long dialogue scenes, a regularly repeating leitmotif (of a mysterious, glamorous woman), and a clear progression of accumulated effect. Fair enough, since he's stated that he believes there's something fictionalized about any memory." Edmund White, The New York Review of Books (read the entire New York Review of Books review)