Ziggy, Stardust and Me, by James Brandon

Ziggy, Stardust and Me by James Brandon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


1973.

"On December 15, the American Psychiatric Association changed history. After a long and rigorous, seemingly insurmountable battle fought by the Gay Liberation Movement, the APA officially removed homosexuality from the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Simply put: if you identified as queer, for the first time in recorded history, you were considered 'normal'" (Brandon, "Author's Note," 349).

Before that, queer boys and girls (and adults) like 16-year-old Jonathan Collins were sick and treated to such aversion therapies as being electrically shocked when presented with a picture of a person of the same gender. Jonathan wants to be normal, to be fixed. His alcoholic father wants the same. Jonathan only has his father and his "sympathetic neighbor and friend, Starla," and no one else. He is bullied by the Apes at school, led by the first boy he ever kissed. He suffers from asthma and "escapes into the safe haven of his imagination where his hero David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and his dead mother give him guidance and love.

In DC, the presidency of Richard Nixon is unraveling into lies and betrayal

Enter Web, "a Lakota boy ...who is everything Jonathan wishes he could be: fearless, fearsome, and, most importantly, not ashamed of being gay." Indeed, boys like Jonathan and Web, have a special place in Lakota culture.

That they fall in love is inevitable. That this first love comes with complications and pain and happiness and self-acceptance is inevitable. That there are lies and betrayal is, again, inevitable.

This "coming-of-age" and coming story is heartbreaking and sad, as it is powerful and hopeful and redemptive (front cover).

Highly recommended.



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