UW Press: Autobiography of My Hungers

Living Out
David Bergman, Joan Larkin, and Raphael Kadushin, Series Editors

Writers for Writers Award, Poets & Writers magazine

“An unforgettable portrait of the artist as a young immigrant gay poet. These brief, passionate chapters are filled with rare courage, raw honesty, and the uncommon beauty of a life spent yearning for consolation and hope. Absolutely arresting.”
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire

In the second of his trio of acclaimed memoirs, Rigoberto González looks at his past through a startling lens: hunger. A childhood of neglect, adolescent yearnings, and adult desire for a larger world, another lover, a different body—all are explored by González in a series of heartbreaking and poetic vignettes.

Rigoberto González. Rigoberto González is the author of seventeen books of poetry and prose, including the memoirs What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth and Butterfly Boy, winner of the American Book Award. He is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers magazine, serves on the board of trustees of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and is a professor of English at Rutgers–Newark, the State University of New Jersey.

http://www.rigobertogonzalez.com

“Told in a series of revealing vignettes and poems, González's Autobiography of my Hungers turns moments of need and want into revelations of truth and self-awareness, creating the portrait of an artist that is complex if not entirely complete.”
—El Paso Times

“Rigoberto González's trim yet artistically potent Autobiography of My Hungers combines poetry, musings, memories, pleasures, pains, and most importantly, yearnings that have made him the exacting artist he has become today. . . . González's self-analysis by means of mixed media is stimulating, enlightening, and well worth the journey.”
—Bay Area Reporter

“This beautiful, unconventional memoir, infused with poetic language, places González firmly in the top tier of American writers. Not only aficionados of memoir, poetry, and Latin American and gay literature but also general audiences will enjoy these stories and poems.”
—Library Journal

“Immigrant and gay readers may experience release in the book's agonizing familiarity; all readers will find it lusciously evocative.”
—Publishers Weekly

“González writes with deep, soul-crushing sadness. He pens with the beauty of a poet.”
—Dallas Voice

“Through his provocative vignettes, González communicates a lifetime of struggle for affirmation and self-acceptance.”
—Make/Shift

“A slim volume of candid vignettes that illuminate an artist's blossoming against a backdrop of brutal poverty and emotional tumult.”
—Out

Of Related Interest
What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth A Memoir of Boyhood Rigoberto González	Butterfly Boy Memories of a Chicano Mariposa Rigoberto González