$9.99
Description
Failure to Appear: Resistance, Identity and Loss, A Memoir is a memoir about a gay woman of conscience who became a fugitive, on the run for over nineteen years using several fake names. This book is a gripping story about finding your real self and your sexual truth. It delves into family rejection for being a lesbian, the price of ideals, lost love, the agony of an underground existence, and personal renewal. The final, suspenseful chapters describe the author’s voluntary surrender and re-sentencing.
It takes place in the turbulent late sixties through the late eighties, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Nixon and Reagan years, the women’s and gay liberation movements, and the AIDS crisis. This story is very relevant to our time, as injustice and bigotry remain fundamental societal ills. As one reader described it, “I couldn’t put it down. It has it all: coming of age, coming out, sex scenes, close calls, and gripping life choices. I sunk deeper under my comforter and deeper into an amazing true story.”
Advanced Praise From Jewelle Gomez
FAILURE TO APPEAR is a fierce coming of age story of a political activist, a young woman and of a generation. When it becomes as clear to the reader as it does to Emily Freeman that “In a mad country, it’s sane to be insane” the urgency of being a part of progressive change is a body slam that takes your breath away. That visceral response is even stronger when we understand that this truth is as crucial today as it was in our country’s past. This book takes its place alongside the searing and sensitive memoirs of other moral dissenters who’ve helped change the course our history.
Jewelle Gomez, Author of the Gilda Stories
Advanced Praise From Lee Lynch:
This is a thoroughly detailed document of a lesbian in a closet within a closet. As compelling as a novel, it brings back the conflicts and clashes of the 1960s, the misunderstood compassion for our soldiers in Viet Nam, and the consequences of one woman’s principled and inspiring resistance. I was ever eager to return to her story each time I had to put it down.
Lee Lynch, Award Winning Author of The Swashbuckler, An American Queer, Rainbow Gap, and more