Status
Call number
Publication
Description
"A beautifully written, hallucinatorily evocative memoir of growing up gay in baby-boom America." -- Newsweek In his powerful autobiography, Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!" Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art.… (more)
User reviews
Mark's troubled childhood finds not easy solution, and matters will get worse before he eventually finds his feet. He speaks honestly about his feelings, his father, his mother who eventually deteriorates, and his growing awareness that he is gay - and that that is not what he is supposed to be; usually the memories are factual, but sometimes they are just impressions, and these are perhaps even more revealing.
Mark Doty's childhood was far from idyllic, and his account is often moving, even heartbreaking. In addition it is full of insightful observations, but what makes it truly memorable if the quality of the writing, it is most beautifully expressed, the result is a thoroughly involving and thought provoking read.
First it appears in a
It is his family that provides much of the drama of this portrait of a young artist, with a passive/aggressive father who cannot hold on to a job and insists on denuding a teenage Mark's head of its long hair or his mother whose addictive personality leads to storms of emotion so harsh and frequent that Mark "can feel when the storms are brewing" and makes himself scarce, exploring various methods of easing his tension from hashish to transcendental meditation.
I was moved by his gradual recognition and acceptance of his sexuality and the blooming of the artist that would eventually win prizes for his poetry. He withstood the fire of the pressures from his family and grew into a successful artist and firebird who watches his own life emerge like a dream from the elements that made it his own.
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
Physical description
ISBN
Local notes
Google Books