Taboo (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) Book

"In this first volume of Living Out, a new series of gay and lesbian autobiographies, poet Rickel (arreboles) offers 16 impressionistic, often sexually explicit essays that follow no particular chronological order. The hallmark of his style is his adaptation of poetic techniques and structures to the narrative memoir. In "Groud," for instance, a brief essay on the role of habit and repetition in grounding one's sense of selfhood, Rickel makes his point effectively by invoking seemingly disparate anecdotes about a bird's nest, a mirror, the momentary loss of a bike, his father's extreme discomfort with unknown sounds and a friend's calling attention to his habitually furrowed brow. While this fragmentation subverts the traditional autobiography, it can also nudge the reader toward greater insight and emotional response, though Rickel occasionally stops short of a deeper, more rewarding examination of some of the issues he raises. In other essays, Rickel recalls growing up in Arizona in the 1950s as the child of classical musicians; caring for his aging father; his childhood sexual experiences with other boys, which were divorced from any notions of homosexuality; his sexual preference in youth for Hispanic boys; and the passionate sense of meaning and identity he found on discovering literature. Rickel's smooth, accessible writing and his candor about such personal feelings as racism and, in one episode, latent pedophilia often elevate this account of an otherwise conventional gay life."-Publishers Weekly An impressionistic memoir offers images of a life in progress, including scenes from Boyer Rickel's rural Tempe, Arizona, childhood in the 1950s; his relationship with a physically shrinking father; his eccentric teenage friendships; his growing awareness of his sexuality among young, Hispanic gays; and a trip through Italy with his lover. A personal book, but also wholly universal, Taboo investigates the way one breaks through taboos and becomes a self-realized adult. "Like Bernard Cooper's Truth Serum and Donald Windham's Emblems of Conduct, Boyer Rickel's Taboo is a memoir that is poetic and almost fragmentary. His prose is delicate and sensuous. We watch him grow up through the episodes, and watch as his growing self-knowledge augments sense and memory. A beautiful book."-Brian Bouldrey, editor of Best American Gay Fiction and book editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian "Even if I hadn't known that Boyer Rickel is a poet, I might easily have surmised it, not only because of the direct, graceful, beautiful, and deeply felt writing in his memoir Taboo, but because of the book's uncommon structure, which eschews Proustian completeness and aims instead for a more scattershot effect. In this age of revenge-seeking, neurotic, self-aggrandizing memoirs, I don't know of anything quite like this sane and lovely book. I recommend it highly."-Felice Picano, author of Like People in HistoryRead More