Shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
Nominated for the RBC/Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction
Selected as an Indigo ‘Top 50 Books of 2013’
National Bestseller
A passionate memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love.
Alison Wearing’s father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe’s internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and a devoted father, something almost unheard of in the 1970s.
Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is both a moving memoir and an important historical document, a story from the first generation of children living with openly LGBTQ parents. Already wrestling with an adolescent’s search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly “went in,” concealing the truth about her life and fabricating extravagant stories that were acceptable for the time. But as the years went on and definitions of family began to expand and evolve, it became possible not just to have a gay father, but to celebrate one.
Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life’s great lessons in love.
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