an expert on the mechanics of desire and on the subtle ways we clothe that universal drive. “A skillfully paced story that brings the exiles’ disparate proprieties into focus. “Rechy’s story of himself unfolds with the color, energy, humor, and teeming characters of a Dickens novel, as if Pip or David Copperfield had grown up in the El Paso barrio.” -Bryan Woolley, Dallas Morning News riveting.” -Charlotte Abbott, The Advocate Where contemporary gay memoirs tend to exaggerate stereotypes and milk them for effect, Rechy resists clicheé. “If the trumped-up antics of Augusten Burroughs wannabes have made you long for the reflection and finesse of a more mature writer, John Rechy’s About My Life and the Kept Woman may do the trick. As a memoirist, Rechy is both participant and observer, and he segues as easily between narrative and exegesis as his younger self did between the lure of the wild streets and the embrace of his traditional family.” - Los Angeles Magazine

Army during the Korean War, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not-wanted for him, he never allowed them to define him.Ī moving, powerful story of a life that bears witness to some of the most riotous changes of the past century, About My Life and the Kept Woman is as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path. While he performed the roles, others-the authoritarians in the U.S. As he grew older-and as his fascination with the memory of a notorious kept woman in his childhood deepened-Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage, but in his sexuality.

Raised Mexican-American in El Paso, Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely segregated, Rechy was often assumed to be Anglo because of his light skin, and had his name “changed” for him by a teacher, from Juan to John. John Rechy has always known discrimination.

Gore Vidal has hailed John Rechy as “one of the few original American writers of the last century,” and Michael Cunningham has called him an author “whose life is almost as interesting, and meaningful, as his work.” Now in paperback, Rechy’s long-awaited memoir, About My Life and the Kept Woman, is the author’s first open treatment of his life-and a testament to the power of pride and self-acceptance.

The Sexual Outlaw by John Rechy