Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
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Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable. Publishers Weekly This moving memoir of a young Chicano boy's maturing into a self-accepting gay adult is a beautifully executed portrait of the experience of being gay, Chicano and poor in the United States. Now an associate professor of English and Latino studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gonzalez writes in a poetic yet straightforward style that heightens the power of his story (mariposa is Spanish for "faggot" as well as butterfly). As he describes growing up in an extended migrant-worker family, his youth in Bakersfield, Calif., and his departure for college, some readers may recognize similar characters and situations from his 2003 novel, Crossing Vines (University of Oklahoma). Like other gay coming-of-age memoirs, this one recounts the hardship of being an effeminate youth with a high singing voice and a penchant for cross-dressing, and the delight in discovering the homoeroticism of classic literature by Melville and E.M. Forster. But Gonzalez transforms these standard conceits into an affecting narrative in which his class and ethnic identities are as vital as his often painful metamorphosis into a fully formed gay man. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Contents Acknowledgments....................xi Part 1: Smarting Points, Starting Points Summer's Passage, Southern California, 1990....................3 Welcome to Indio, California, Pop. 36,793....................10 Ghost Whisper to My Lover....................17 Now Leaving Mexicali, Baja California, Norte....................19 Ghost Whisper to My Lover....................38 Part 2: Childhood and Other Language Lessons Bakersfield, California, 1970-72....................43 Zacapu, México, 1972-79....................47 Thermal, California, 1979-80....................55 Thermal, 1981-82 (Our Little Home on Top of the Garage)....................67 Summer's Passage....................100 Part 3: Adolescent Mariposa Ghost Whisper to My Lover....................115 Indio, 1983-88 ("El Campo" Years)....................119 Part 4: Zacapu Days and Nights of the Dead Summer's Passage....................165 Ghost Whisper to My Lover....................175 Zacapu, July 1990 (Imago)....................178 Part 5: Unpinned Riverside, California....................195 Ghost Whisper to My Lover....................204
