Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties

by John D'Emilio

Overview

John D’Emilio is one of the leading historians of his generation and a pioneering figure in the field of LGBTQ history. At times his life has been seemingly at odds with his upbringing. How does a boy from an Italian immigrant family in which everyone unfailingly went to confession and Sunday Mass become a lapsed Catholic? How does a family who worshipped Senator Joseph McCarthy and supported Richard Nixon produce an antiwar activist and pacifist? How does a family in which the word divorce was never spoken raise a son who comes to explore the hidden gay sexual underworld of New York City?

Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood is D’Emilio’s coming-of-age story in which he takes readers from his working-class Bronx neighborhood to an elite Jesuit high school in Manhattan to Columbia University and the political and social upheavals of the late 1960s. He shares his personal experiences of growing up in a conservative, tight-knit, multigenerational family, how he went from considering entering the priesthood to losing his faith and coming to terms with his same-sex desires. Throughout, D’Emilio outlines his complicated relationship with his family while showing how his passion for activism influenced his decision to use research, writing, and teaching to build a strong LGBTQ movement.

This is not just John D’Emilio’s personal story; it opens a window into how the conformist baby boom decade of the 1950s transformed into the tumultuous years of radical social movements and widespread protest during the 1960s. It is the story of what happens when different cultures and values collide and the tensions and possibilities for personal discovery and growth that emerge. Intimate and honest, D’Emilio’s story will resonate with anyone who has had to chart their own path in a world they did not expect to find.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478015925
Publisher:	Duke University Press Books
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	652,721
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

John D’Emilio is Emeritus Professor of History and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the author of many books, including The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture, also published by Duke University Press; Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin; Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970​; and Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow, and he was a finalist for the National Book Award for Lost Prophet, which won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction. D’Emilio was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2005 and was named Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune in 2004. He lives in Chicago.

Hometown:

Chicago, Illinois

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1948

Place of Birth:

Bronx, New York

Education:

B.A., Columbia University, 1970; Ph.D., 1982

Table of Contents

Preface  ix
Part I. An Italian Boy from the Bronx
1. An Italian Family  3
2. Big Grandma's House  11
3. School: Becoming a Big Boy  17
4. Baby Jim  25
5. Change, and More Change  32
6. A Family of Friends  40
7. God Help Me!  49
8. A Beginning and an End  57
Part II. A Jesuit Education
9. A Whole New World  65
10. Striving to Win  76
11. My Sexual Desires  84
12. Another Ending  94
13. Working in the City  105
Part III. Everything Changes
14. God Is Dead  119
15. War and Peace  128
16. This Is Me  140
17. I Come Out, Sort Of  148
18. Her Name Is Margaret Mead  160
19. And Then I Studied  169
20. Now What Do I Do?  182
21. A Door Opens  194
Postscript  205
Acknowledgments  207

What People are Saying About This

History and Presence - Robert A. Orsi

"It is a bright early spring day where I am writing this, but I hardly notice: for hours now, I have been lost in John D’Emilio’s memoir of growing up in the Italian East Bronx, his days as a Catholic schoolboy, his intellectual and sexual awakening at a distinguished Jesuit high school, his political awakening at Columbia, and more. It is all marvelous. Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood is a gripping read. It is sure to become a classic in several fields—among them, LGBTQ history, Italian American history, New York history, the history of New York Catholicism, and the history of Jesuit education in the United States. Its readers are waiting for this, and they will be thrilled when it appears.”

When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History - Hugh Ryan

“John D’Emilio’s Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood is a tender memoir of New York City boyhood, stretching from the ethnic, working-class enclaves of the Bronx to the burgeoning world of gay liberation in the Village to the radical classrooms of Columbia University. D’Emilio’s historical acumen and vivid prose present a complicated vision of pre-Stonewall gay life, which will fascinate anyone who loves the history of New York City.”

Editorial Reviews

"[D'Emilio's] memoir is a love letter to Manhattan. but also to the Bronx of his childhood, to the schools that educated and occasionally hindered him, to the family members who nourished him—even when they no longer understood him—so he would someday find his life's work. . . . Based on the many pleasures offered by this book, I hope he decides to write the sequel."

Gay and Lesbian Review - Daniel A. Burr

In this fascinating self-portrait and insightful portrait of his times, a prominent queer historian recalls growing up in the 1950s and ’60s—a smart, pious, conservative, Catholic boy from a working-class Italian family in the Bronx transforms himself into a radical left, openly gay Columbia University student.

The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams - Jonathan Ned Katz

"D’Emilio, who has been an eminent historian of the American gay man’s experience and struggle during his lifetime, has turned his searching eye inward and now gives us a different kind of history—one that’s pegged to his own life, loves and learnings. Every page is fork-tender with emotion, and to be honest, in my mind’s eye, I imagined him going back to a huge file of every sweet or difficult or thoughtful observation he’d ever excised from one of his academic books and sewing them together with hindsight for this volume."

Xtra! - S. Bear Bergman

"As D’Emilio applies his skills as an acclaimed social and cultural historian to his own youth, Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood offers us a caring and thoughtful window into a time of enormous change in American society and the Catholic Church. His account is warm and gracious; he is quick to acknowledge his own limitations while acknowledging the crucial role of his friends and family in shaping and loving the gay Catholic man he became."

Brian Linnane

★ 06/01/2022

D'Emilio (Queer Legacies) is a pioneer of gender and sexuality studies and gay history, and his memoir deserves as much recognition as his scholarship. He describes in rich detail his Bronx boyhood in a multi-generational Italian American home. The characters of his young life include his classmates at his Roman Catholic elementary school. Sunday dinners at his grandmothers are profoundly memorable. His world expands as he is admitted to Manhattan's prestigious Regis High School—Jesuit education at its finest. There, he blooms as a budding intellectual. It is also clear that he has an incredible capacity for friendships which last a lifetime. This characteristic is also in evidence from his description of his undergraduate years at Columbia. Other important topics in D'Emilo's memoir are his conflicts with his family as he begins a progression leftward in politics, and his gradual process of coming to terms with his sexuality. The latter starts with the high schooler's furtive encounters with older men in the subway; in time, he finds his first loves. VERDICT D'Emilio's youthful reminiscences make for a classic work of literature that deserves a wide readership. One hopes this memoir is only the first in a succession.—David Azzolina

Library Journal

★ 2022-03-30
Unusual among today’s memoirs, this one is upbeat and generous spirited about its author’s early life and challenges.

In sparkling fashion, D’Emilio enters company with Alfred Kazin and A Walker in the City, the classic work that, in Polish Jewish immigrant tones, evoked the early years of a Bronx boyhood. D’Emilio, a Guggenheim fellow and noted historian of gay history in the U.S., writes about his early years as a son of the Bronx, but in Italian Catholic hues. Like Kazin’s book, this one sings a hymn to that particular borough and to the city as a whole. This is also a son’s tale of a close-knit family adapting to a new world with a mixture of love, aspiration, loss, and tension. In D’Emilio’s case, the emergence of his sexuality in a particularly repressive era made growing up and adapting to American life even more complicated. While the author depicts his burgeoning gay sexuality with unusual ease, this part of him is by no means the only subject of this appealing book. He brings his Catholic family’s religiosity, the priests who taught and mentored him, and his own Catholic elementary schooling richly alive. He also offers a particularly affecting portrayal of one of Manhattan’s great Jesuit institutions, Regis High School, where D’Emilio’s intelligence caught the attention of his teachers to the point where he considered becoming a Jesuit priest. Columbia University also takes center stage as the site of his maturation as a scholar. During his undergraduate years in the tumultuous late 1960s, D’Emilio counseled fellow students about avoiding the draft and sought a conscientious objector deferment while working as an assistant to Margaret Mead. The author’s compassionate spirit suffuses the text to such a degree that one hopes for a future continuation into his years as a professional historian.

A warm, humane coming-of-age memoir that delivers much more than its title suggests.

Kirkus Reviews