Paul Monette – författare

He grew up in a small town in New England in the 1950's, watching lassie, going to church, getting straight A's at school, a scholar destined for success. But he already had a secret, and his public life with family and friends was already a constant round of ventriloquism as he played the joker and pretended to be the same as everyone else. For Paul Monette was gay.BECOMING A MAN is about growing up gay, and about the tyranny and self denial of the closet - one man's struggle, for half his life, to come out. From the white-bread 1950's through the rebellious 1960's to the self-creating 1970's and beyond, it forms a passionately honest and unsparing account of the tortures of living a lie, a naked protrait of one man's fight for freedom in a time of ignorance and bigotry.

Winner of the National Book Award for Becoming a Man, his candid and passionate account of growing up gay in a time of ignorance and bigotry, this third volume of Paul Monette's autobiographical writing brings together an eclectic collection of essays written under the shadow of AIDS.Meditative, philosophical, sometimes blisteringly angry, Paul Monette presents a simultaneously personal and universal vision of the struggle for freedom faced by gay and lesbian people in 1990s American, counteracting reference to his own illness with a unique perspective on literature, politics and religion.Varied yet focused, damning yet tender, Last Watch of the Night shines like a beacon of hope in a fog of intolerance - offering solace to those who think they're alone, raining down shame on those who would have them stay that way.