Purchase
A Memoir of My Father
W. W. Norton
June 2013
On Sale: May 28, 2013
345 pages
ISBN: 0393082520
EAN: 9780393082524
Kindle: B00AR35438
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Memoir
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and β80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberationβfew of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Franciscoβs vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference. In Alysiaβs teens, Steveβs friendsβseveral of whom she has befriendedβfall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her itβs time to come home; heβs sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create. Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her fatherβs journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a fatherβs legacy and a daughterβs love.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - June 2, 2013
| 
© 2003-2026