First published 1995
Blanche McCrary Boyd weaves together memory, journalism, and fictional storytelling in this collection that defies easy categorization. A former sixties radical who returned to her Southern heritage, Boyd chronicles her unconventional life as a lesbian who loves skydiving and stock car racing. She moves from Esalen workshops and kundalini yoga to seeking transcendence without artificial aids. The book captures family gatherings and passionate romantic disasters with equal intensity. Boyd crashes Charleston arts festivals alongside eccentric aristocrats and witnesses papal ceremonies at Yankee Stadium. Each episode explores the different personas people adopt and abandon while discovering their authentic selves. Boyd writes with fierce wit and unflinching honesty about navigating between physical pleasure and spiritual awakening, creating a testament that refuses to conform to traditional boundaries between genres or expectations.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, autobiography, contemporary, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Charleston, Esalen, Yankee Stadium
Period: 1960s
176 pages · Paperback · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group