My Father’s Closet
Autor Karen A. McClintocken Limba Engleză Paperback – 3 apr 2017
Thirty years after her father’s death, Karen McClintock sets out to find the gay father she never really knew. As we follow the unraveling family secret, we find ourselves drawn into her story as they stumble into infidelity, grieve heartbreaking losses, and remain loyal in love.
Set in Columbus, Ohio, My Father’s Closet tells the story of how just before the war, McClintock’s parents fell in love and married, while overseas in Germany the man whom she believes became her father’s lover was concealing his Jewish and gay identities in order to escape to America. A set of her father’s journals, letters her parents sent to each other during the Second World War, and a mysterious painting all lead her toward the truth about her gay father. McClintock weaves a complex secret into the fabric of lives we truly care about. And in the process, she leads us out of her father’s closet.
This gripping memoir captures the longing children feel for a distant or hidden parent and taps into the complexity of human connection and abandonment. The characters are resilient and vibrant. The hidden lovers, the nosey neighbors, and surprise lovers all show up. In the end, this extraordinary family finds ways to connect and freedom to love. Anyone who grew up with a family secret will appreciate the dynamics afoot in this fast-paced and compelling story.
Set in Columbus, Ohio, My Father’s Closet tells the story of how just before the war, McClintock’s parents fell in love and married, while overseas in Germany the man whom she believes became her father’s lover was concealing his Jewish and gay identities in order to escape to America. A set of her father’s journals, letters her parents sent to each other during the Second World War, and a mysterious painting all lead her toward the truth about her gay father. McClintock weaves a complex secret into the fabric of lives we truly care about. And in the process, she leads us out of her father’s closet.
This gripping memoir captures the longing children feel for a distant or hidden parent and taps into the complexity of human connection and abandonment. The characters are resilient and vibrant. The hidden lovers, the nosey neighbors, and surprise lovers all show up. In the end, this extraordinary family finds ways to connect and freedom to love. Anyone who grew up with a family secret will appreciate the dynamics afoot in this fast-paced and compelling story.
| Toate formatele și edițiile | Preț | Express |
|---|---|---|
| Paperback (1) | 133.72 lei 3-5 săpt. | |
| Ohio State University Press – 3 apr 2017 | 133.72 lei 3-5 săpt. | |
| Hardback (1) | 211.93 lei 3-5 săpt. | |
| Ohio State University Press – 3 apr 2017 | 211.93 lei 3-5 săpt. |
Preț: 133.72 lei
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814253960
ISBN-10: 0814253962
Pagini: 256
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.36 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Trillium
ISBN-10: 0814253962
Pagini: 256
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.36 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Trillium
Recenzii
“From the outside, the McClintocks looked about as wholesome and midwestern as it gets. But on the inside, a bewildering emotional vacuum was taking a complicated toll. Karen McClintock reconstructs the details of her father’s double life with novelistic flair, keen psychological insight, and graceful compassion.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home (2006), Are You My Mother? (2012), and 2014 MacArthur Fellow
“In My Father’s Closet, Karen McClintock reports from the heart of America, the heart of the twentieth century, and the heart of a daughter who struggled to understand and draw close to a kind and loving father who kept her at a poignant distance in order to protect necessary illusions. This fascinating and eloquent memoir reveals the price our society extracted from its gay people (and their families) who refused to marginalize themselves simply because the absolute truth of their hearts did not fit the accepted mold.” —Candace Walsh, author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity
“Making discoveries—sometimes unwanted ones—is the subject of McClintock’s memoir, My Father’s Closet. . . . The evidence the author accumulates over the years regarding her father’s true sexuality is intriguing. . . . To her credit, McClintock works not only to piece together her father’s story but also to imagine his struggle and anguish through it all.” —Dale Boyer, The Gay & Lesbian Review
Notă biografică
Karen A. McClintock, PhD, is a psychologist specializing in family secrets and shame recovery. She is a national workshop leader and teaches human sexuality at Southern Oregon University. She is the author of four previous books, including Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing and Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations.
Extras
Winged Cupid
1967
At age fourteen, I am bothered by zits and mood swings. Searching through every bookshelf in the house for information about sex, I find an utterly useless and too-heavy-to-lift textbook by Alfred Kinsey and a collection of National Geographic magazines containing pictures but no instructions. So I ask Mom about falling in love, which seems like an acceptable topic that might lead her to tell me more about sex.
“I’m sure I must have told you this before,” she says flatly, reaching under the end table to the bottom shelf for visual aids—pulling out her 1938 North High School yearbook. Folded clippings from The Columbus Journal are stuck between the pages. Mom pats the spot next to her on the lime green couch that backs up to the picture window. A thin film of sheer draperies keeps curious neighbors from knowing too much about us. She offers her palm-out finger wiggle, the come-here gesture that I cherished as a child and have resisted since becoming a teenager. I’m reluctant to move closer to the lingering smell of smoke in her hair and on her clothing, even though she put the last butt out a few minutes ago. The pictures are the hook that draws me over to her.
Looking at her senior picture a long while, I unsuccessfully try to find my face inside hers. Her head is tilted leftward, and she looks over her shoulder at the camera, giving off a bit of sass. She has approachably friendly features that neither stand out nor offend.
“You’re so young, Mom,” I say.
She flips the book forward to my father’s senior picture, and I think that his baby-fine hair is like mine. I reach up and rake my fingers through my bangs the way men do in the movies when they try to catch a look from a group of girls walking by. I’ve never seen Dad do that, so I squint at his picture in case I missed something. “Not a hair out of place,” Mom says. “Not then, not ever.” She has a slightly disapproving tone to her voice.
“His glasses make him look smart,” I say, though he also looks slightly nerdy and naïve.
“He’s sweet looking, isn’t he?” she asks. “The smile is what got me.”
I stop my usual chatty banter, knowing that the less I say the more she will. She’s about to launch into the story of their romance. Telling it reminds her that while the smile reeled her in, she married him for love, for his inviting blue eyes, the resonant tone in his voice, and his fascination with her.
Thinking back on this day, the adult me wants to derail her story, to interrupt it by swapping my father for one of those other boys in the yearbook, to pick out Ben for her or Ralph, Roger, maybe Mike. I’d find a totally different guy to meet her at the top of the stairs at the high school the day she won the election and became membership recruiter for the Thespian Society, the job that led her directly into my father’s charms. If I could reach back in time and disrupt their story, I could save them those years of heartache.
But I can’t. Besides, I wouldn’t exist if it had gone differently.
So I’m content with the memory of sitting next to her looking at the yearbook, exploring young love’s innocence and trickery.
1967
At age fourteen, I am bothered by zits and mood swings. Searching through every bookshelf in the house for information about sex, I find an utterly useless and too-heavy-to-lift textbook by Alfred Kinsey and a collection of National Geographic magazines containing pictures but no instructions. So I ask Mom about falling in love, which seems like an acceptable topic that might lead her to tell me more about sex.
“I’m sure I must have told you this before,” she says flatly, reaching under the end table to the bottom shelf for visual aids—pulling out her 1938 North High School yearbook. Folded clippings from The Columbus Journal are stuck between the pages. Mom pats the spot next to her on the lime green couch that backs up to the picture window. A thin film of sheer draperies keeps curious neighbors from knowing too much about us. She offers her palm-out finger wiggle, the come-here gesture that I cherished as a child and have resisted since becoming a teenager. I’m reluctant to move closer to the lingering smell of smoke in her hair and on her clothing, even though she put the last butt out a few minutes ago. The pictures are the hook that draws me over to her.
Looking at her senior picture a long while, I unsuccessfully try to find my face inside hers. Her head is tilted leftward, and she looks over her shoulder at the camera, giving off a bit of sass. She has approachably friendly features that neither stand out nor offend.
“You’re so young, Mom,” I say.
She flips the book forward to my father’s senior picture, and I think that his baby-fine hair is like mine. I reach up and rake my fingers through my bangs the way men do in the movies when they try to catch a look from a group of girls walking by. I’ve never seen Dad do that, so I squint at his picture in case I missed something. “Not a hair out of place,” Mom says. “Not then, not ever.” She has a slightly disapproving tone to her voice.
“His glasses make him look smart,” I say, though he also looks slightly nerdy and naïve.
“He’s sweet looking, isn’t he?” she asks. “The smile is what got me.”
I stop my usual chatty banter, knowing that the less I say the more she will. She’s about to launch into the story of their romance. Telling it reminds her that while the smile reeled her in, she married him for love, for his inviting blue eyes, the resonant tone in his voice, and his fascination with her.
Thinking back on this day, the adult me wants to derail her story, to interrupt it by swapping my father for one of those other boys in the yearbook, to pick out Ben for her or Ralph, Roger, maybe Mike. I’d find a totally different guy to meet her at the top of the stairs at the high school the day she won the election and became membership recruiter for the Thespian Society, the job that led her directly into my father’s charms. If I could reach back in time and disrupt their story, I could save them those years of heartache.
But I can’t. Besides, I wouldn’t exist if it had gone differently.
So I’m content with the memory of sitting next to her looking at the yearbook, exploring young love’s innocence and trickery.