Member of the Family

In *A Member of the Family* the most talented gay writers of our time turn their hearts and psyches inside out to show us the families who gave birth to them, raised them, rejected them, exiled them, and loved them. There are no stereotypes here. Each essay, commissioned specifically for this collection, describes a family that is unique and so idiosyncratic that it can belong only to the author - and so familiar and universal that it reminds us startlingly of our own. John Preston begins the anthology with the question interviewers still ask him: "What do your parents think?" Then he remembers his past, the angry letter he left for his parents the day he moved out of their home forever, and the unsuspected impact that letter had on his younger brother. Other authors write too of letters they left or sent, of hurts they gave and received, of reconciliations and unresolved conflicts. The results are extraordinary. Michael Nava writes of his stoic, enigmatic grandfather, embittered in middle age and a living portrait of the man Nava himself might become; Eric Latzky, on the other hand, makes the heart ache with his portrayal of his grandfather, Louis; and Larry Duplechan mixes laught