About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir - Rilegato

Rechy was raised Mexican American in El Paso, Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely separated from their Anglo classmates for daily lice checks and English pronunciation lessons, and being proud of who you were was unheard of. Because of his light skin, he was often assumed to be Anglo, and his name was "changed" by a teacher, from Juan to John. As he grew older - and as his fascination deepened with the memory of a notorious kept woman in his childhood - Rechy became "a ghost boy" who preferred to be alone, feeling different in his heritage and, eventually, in his sexuality. While he performed the roles others wanted for him, he never allowed anyone to define him - whether the authoritarians in the U.S. Army, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not.
In these pages, Rechy opens up about the reality behind the events in his famous autobiographical novel, City of Night, and introduces a new vibrant cast of characters: his loving Mexican mother and violent Scottish father; Alicia, an enigmatic young woman whose life intertwines with his from El Paso to San Francisco; and a roster of such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg and Christopher Isherwood.
Navigating the Depression, the Second World War, the Watts Riots, and the Vietnam War protests, About My Life and the Kept Woman is a story of a life that bears witness to some of the most turbulent changes of the past century. It is an indictment of intolerance and a portrait of an individual who defied it to forge his own path.