Autobiography of My Hungers

Rigoberto González, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, takes a second piercing look at his past through a startling new lens: hunger.

The need for sustenance originating in childhood poverty, the adolescent emotional need for solace and comfort, the adult desire for a larger world, another lover, a different body--all are explored by González in a series of heartbreaking and poetic vignettes.

Each vignette is a defining moment of self-awareness, every moment an important step in a lifelong journey toward clarity, knowledge, and the nourishment that comes in various forms--even "the smallest biggest joys" help piece together a complex portrait of a gay man of color who at last defines himself by what he learns, not by what he yearns for.

Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, Publishing Triangle

"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

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

Author: Rigoberto Gonzalez
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 09/19/2013
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780299292508

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2013
Publishers Weekly 03/18/2013
Library Journal 06/01/2013 pg. 106
Library Journal 03/01/2014 pg. 48

About the Author
Rigoberto González is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose and the editor of Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing. His memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa won the American Book Award, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine, serves on the executive board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and is an associate professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey.