IT HAS BEEN SAID that the three stages of sex are feel, squeal, and congeal. All are abundantly present in Edmund White’s new collection of mini-memoirs. The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir rises to the challenge of its subtitle by being both an enjoyable memoir and a lively book about sex, which the author discusses in a clear, open way that’s refreshing, and necessary, in a society as puritanical as our own.
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Reviews of Song of Myself by Arnie Kantrowitz, Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino, and Invasion of the Daffodils by Dino Enrique Piacentini
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Although these memoirs were written over six decades, they read as a seamless recollection of an age and speak to the dread, the joy, and the angst of coming out at a time when doing so could be life-threatening. In our own troubling times, her reflections become all the more germane, reminding us of the courage it once took for people to discover the truth about themselves, and to let the world know about it.
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KNOWN for her large-scale collage portraits of Black women, the critically acclaimed artist Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971. Introduced to art as a child by her mother, fashion model Sandra Bush, she earned her BFA from New York’s Pratt Institute and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has accepted various artist residences and received numerous prizes. She now lives and works in Brooklyn with her partner and frequent model Racquel Chevremont.
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Mama provides an unflinching look at the difficult circumstance of a Black family in struggle and of a young woman’s efforts to care for her half-brother in the midst of it all.
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NOVELISTIC AND EPISODIC, Oliver Radclyffe’s memoir Frighten the Horses is written with verve, humor, and specificity. His story begins in an affluent British family, where Oliver was raised to take his state of privilege for granted. Later in life, however, he would have to contend with the social challenges of a different kind of status: his transmasculine identity.
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THREE NEW BOOKS, two novels and a memoir, help reveal the struggles and victories of LGBT Syrians. For all the beauty of the country, Syria is a land of horrific oppression, where gay men in particular, fearing exposure from the police and informers, must find secret places for sexual encounters or social interaction. They remind us of the promise of the Arab Spring and the crackdown and refugee crisis that followed, which affected so many people’s lives.
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AS A POET AGES, he’s often faced with several choices. He can keep doing what he has always done, or he can, by seriously confronting himself, seek another voice. Jason Schneiderman has done the latter brilliantly in his new book, Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire. He reflects humorously on his life as a poet, often poking fun at himself and his poses. He wrestles with his Jewish heritage by taking on Stalin and the Holocaust, and then delves into the angst of gay divorce.
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Guy Trebay captures the essential things about the sexual playground that was Manhattan during the transition from Doom to Glitter.
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Another Word for Love unfolds in 35 loosely chronological episodes, but the title prompts an immediate question: What is that other word?
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