Paul Vitagliano

This book is adorable! Even if you are illiterate, the pictures will make you smile, and some of them will make you laugh out loud.

It's all photos of gay people when they were children, with a short description by the person. Most of the photos are of boys, and a lot of them follow the script of "I was a very effeminate and fabulous child who hated sports and loved dressing up in girl's clothes and I was bullied a lot, but now I love my life." There are also a bunch of very different photos and stories that help to give the full panorama of gay/lesbian experience. There were a couple of photos where even after I read the name, looked at the picture, and read the story I still wasn't sure what gender the child was. Which is awesome! I also really enjoyed Congressperson Barney Frank's Bar Mitzvah photo. I would love to see a second book that has more girl photos.

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. I was already a fan of the blog of the same name, as well as the sister blog "My First Gay Crush" which is also really fun. I will be proudly displaying this heartwarming book on my coffee table.… (altro)

This is an enjoyable and uplifting book. It's not intended to be on the deep, soul-searching level of coming out literature, and I found this lighter, photography-based book to be a good counterbalance in what can often be a harrowing body of writing.

This is not a book that is intended to be academic: as the title indicates, it's an oral history-- "stories"-- and the individual author's personalities shine through, even in the brief blurbs.

There is a lack of balance in the narratives included, with stories by gay males predominating. I feel that this reflects the dominance of gay male voices in the queer community (literary and otherwise), and I would happily read a volume II, if it was more inclusive.

Over all, though, I'm happy to have this book on my shelf and enjoy rereading a story or two from time to time. It's the kind of book that's good to revisit.… (altro)

This was cute and inspirational, I guess? I mean that seems to be its intention, but just read the blog if you that. I was hoping for more commentary, or some framing around the stories people tell about their pasts but it was very gay male heavy (a few lesbians and no other identities represented that I could tell) and very tied up in gender performance (look how swishy and femme, can't you tell he's homo!!!). Also had a recurring 'it gets better' narrative that seemed to imply homophobia goes away after you come out and bullying and hostility ends at high school. Some of the stories were sad and horrifying tales of family abandonment, and again with little context and no response. So as book of "Aw, look, gay guys were cute as as kids, and hey some say trite but inspiring things!" it performed adequately. And maybe that's all it set out to do, but I wanted more.… (altro)

A short cute book about people who've grown up to be gay. The book features a photo from the childhood of a person, some celebrities mostly just ordinary folk, and on the opposite page is a sentence, upto a few paragraphs, of reminiscing about the photo and their early lives knowing they were different at an early age. Some had no words to describe who they were, and some still reject labeling, which is fair enough. But all people featured have accepted who they truly are, and are happy succesful adults, and this book is very affirming and encouraging for any young person who is worried there's no one like them or no one grows up happily gay. My only critique is that I'd have like to have seen just a couple of photos from present day, would have made the book even more powerful but the, sometimes camp, pictures of kids and young adults were still great.… (altro)