Resilience: A Polemical Memoir of AIDS, Bears, and F*cking

Synopsis: Les K. Wright recounts his journey as a contemporary gay Candide. From grassroots activist to a member of the "forgotten generation" of long-term AIDS survivors, he recounts his struggles in academia, and with alcoholism, all the while searching for love and self-knowledge. "In his fascinating, often wrenching, roller-coaster-ride of a memoir, Les K. Wright takes us through his long-enduring search for love, acceptance, community, meaningful work, and a place to truly feel at home. Resilience reads like a history of a half-century of American gay life, condensed into one man's very intimate story." -- Wayne Hoffman, author of An Older Man and Hard "In this memoir, Les Wright walks us through a life filled with challenges: a sexually abusive father, coming to terms with a condemned sexual identity, the horrors of the AIDS epidemic, and the pull of alcohol, among them. Resilience reminds us of the power of the human spirit to survive and thrive even under those most difficult conditions. As told in these pages, Les Wright's life has the power to inspire and give hope." --John D'Emilio, author of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties "What Les K. Wright has accomplished is much more than a personal memoir. It's a story about the complexity of one's life and of American life. He shows courage in revealing himself, sharing his perceptions of gay men following World War II. His life through the frightening HIV epidemic speaks to other survivors still grieving those years and to the young generation who know AIDS only as a historical fact. Wright writes in an open, simple, fluid style. This is perhaps the most detailed, deep story I have ever read." -- Walt Odets, gay psychologist and author of Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives "Les Wright's life story confronts the reader with the painful fact that surviving AIDS is neither a happy end nor even an end. And in Wright's case, as it is for so many gay men, it is not even the first survival. That began in a childhood in the 1950s where the flimsy American dream could be ruined like a family Polaroid exposed too soon. There's another tentative survival in school where even the whiff of difference could be a kiss of death without the kiss. Wright's salvation in German literature and Germany gleams like Oz although the witches are always waiting in the interstices of that real dream. Wright takes us with him through the thrills of sex and sexual politics, the majestic promises of culture and the intellect, which makes the horrors of AIDS all the more an obscene violation. Survival becomes an ethical calling, at times an art form, at times a retroactive rescue of the bullied kid, at times a call to a stricken community. Resilience is at once the perfect title of the book and a poignant understatement." --Earl Jackson, author of Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation. LES K. WRIGHT is an author, activist, bear historian, and founding member of the GLBT Historical Society San Francisco. He holds an M.A. from the University of Tübingen and an M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Now professor emeritus of literature, he remains active as an independent scholar and photographer. He currently resides in upstate New York.