I'm not rating this book. I read it, it's fairly nuanced, a writer and her liberal arts college professor husband, living in a small college town find out their son is gay. This is a very introspective, and brutally honest portrayal of what the mother was thinking and saying at the time. Before their son talked to them, they defined themselves as tolerant liberals, yet they were dismayed and ignorant of the challenges facing their son.

They were also unaware of the insidiousness of the prejudice in our culture. Like many safe happy well educated middle class members, they were fairly smug and knee jerk in their analysis of our society. They were shocked when they started hearing the casual slurs, slings, and arrows that are tossed out every day.
It is a good book, well written, but I have always maintained that most people live an unexamined life. The writer is brutally honest in her account of how she was fairly clueless and graceless (asking your son if he was interested in young boys? I would have decked her on the spot), and slowly started seeing the unthinking and cruel assumptions that are ceaselessly entwined about our lives. So, good, one more person leads a better and more thoughtful life.

So I am unsure of this book. I have always seen the blind assumptions around me, and marveled that people are unaware. This is a far more gentle awakening to responsibilities we owe to our fellow humans and so may provide some insight as the writer struggles to understand her inner blindnesses.

Puting into GoryDetail's LGBT Themed shrinking Bookbox
Interesting read.


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Chosen from GoryDetails' LGBT bookbox

I was shocked to see that this book was published only 20 years ago - so many of the attitudes seem so uninformed. I guess we have been making some progress after all.

quietorchid wrote such a good journal entry I don't have much to add. But I have to say, I still don't get why this is so important to some people. If you're someone I'm contemplating starting to date, yes I'm interested in your orientation. If we like each other well enough to become close friends, we share a lot of personal information and that might well include our relationships, actual or hoped for. Otherwise, why is it any business of mine? And who asked me to sit in judgment over you?

But that's just one person's opinion. Future readers, what do YOU think of this book?

On shelves in Book Nook
Released during Pride Festival 2014

Perusing a local coffee shop shelf, and LOOK!!!! here's a book that I sent off into the world! (Also have a bookbox at home that needs more books....) Thanks JudySlump612 for putting this out there!

Placed in the LGBTQ+ Bookbox to find a new reader!

Welcome to Bookcrossing, where Books roam freely! I hope you enjoy the book, and leave a journal entry so I can see where the book ended up. You can remain anonymous if you'd like, or join and follow the book's travels throughout the world. The site is free, secure, and non-spamming. Take a look around, and then go read!

P.S. If the book is too good to read and release, that's okay, you can keep it, just let me know that it's found a good home!

Taken from emmejo's LGBTQ+ box with thanks.

Our society as a whole still has a ways to go, but as JudySlump612 says, perhaps we are making some progress after all. This book is a bit of a time capsule - a look at how things were not really all that long ago.

In 1991, when Robb's son Stephen came out, I knew very few openly gay people. That was around the time we found out some of our acquaintances had gay sons - but we only learned that because the sons were had AIDS. Philadelphia, the Tom Hanks film, came out in 1993 and it was a big deal - but I don't think it was inaccurate in its portrayal of the difficulties faced by those with AIDS at that time. In that context, I'm not surprised that Stephen's parents were scared & confused.

Nowadays, most people are inclined to be quite a bit more tolerant; as a general rule, my thinking is similar to JudySlump612's - your sexual orientation is only my business if (a) one of us is interested in the other or (b) you decide to share that information with me. I'm hoping things really will continue to get better.

On the less tolerant than I probably should be front, I found the author's use of words like "licit" and "pregnable" rather annoying. :p

Left on a bench near Sedona and Red Pineapple. Released for Secretariat's 2015 Never Judge a Book By Its Cover Challenge (week 37: three-part names).

(Larger photo here.)

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BookCrossing: making the whole world a library!

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UPDATE: found and journaled - thank you very much.

I started reading, but didn't finish. Not sobering that interests me at all.