About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir [Paperback]

John Rechy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2009

Gore Vidal has hailed John Rechy as “one of the few original American writers of the last century,” and Michael Cunningham has called him an author “whose life is almost as interesting, and meaningful, as his work.” Rechy’s long-awaited memoir,About My Life and the Kept Woman, is the author’s first open treatment of his life—and a testament to the power of pride and self-acceptance. Raised Mexican-American in El Paso, Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely segregated, Rechy was often assumed to be Anglo because of his light skin, and had his name “changed” for him by a teacher, from Juan to John. As he grew older—and as his fascination with the memory of a notorious kept woman in his childhood deepened—Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage, but in his sexuality. A moving, powerful story of a life that bears witness to some of the most riotous changes of the past century,About My Life and the Kept Womanis as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reflecting on his long life with a calm, clear eye, novelist Rechy (The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens) probes his nascent self-identity as a Mexican-American and a homosexual. Growing up during the Depression in El Paso, Tex., the youngest son of a Mexican woman who spoke no English and a Scottish musician father, Rechy recalls his early fascination with beauty, especially in his older adored sister, Olga, who married early, and in the cool, glamorous regard of the notorious kept woman of Mexican politician Augusto de Leon, Marisa Guzman, whom the young narrator glimpsed briefly and memorably at his sister's wedding. Moreover, amid a society that excoriated Mexicans, young Rechy grew into a beautiful, fair-skinned young man torn between feeling proud of his Mexican roots and shame because of them. Fleeing the restricted prospects of El Paso and the depressive rages of his father, Rechy, a budding writer, attended college, then joined the army during the Korean War and began traveling, to Paris, New York City and Los Angeles, where he found hustling for sex from anonymous men suited him. The memoir meanders through years of drifting among jobs and numerous sexual encounters, which became the fodder for his acclaimed City of Night (1963) and other works. Self-adulation aside, Rechy's memoir possesses many fine stylistic vignettes.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Reprint edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802144047
• ISBN-13: 978-0802144041
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #999,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Awesome Presence, March 3, 2008

By 

WrtnWrd "Hankman" (Northridge, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Novelist. Playwright. Essayist. Hustler. John Rechy has been all those things and much, much more. He has written, deeply, about a range of subjects - male-perpetuated myths of `fallen women' (Our Lady of Babylon), an immigrant's descent through Los Angeles (The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez) - and has crafted his work in a breadth of masterful styles. This includes the sexually explicit works - Numbers, Rushes and, most famously, City of Night - that have defined him for generations of readers.
With fierce vulnerability and brave delicacy, his memoir About My Life and the Kept Woman depicts his poor childhood in El Paso's Mexican enclave; years in the numbing U.S. Army; life as a street hustler; and - always - of the alluring woman who intrigues, and then shadows his life, for forty years. Here is how he first encounters the Kept Woman at his sister's wedding:

"When my head resisted being turned away from the kept woman, my mother's hands directed it back to the nuptials, but not before I knew that my life had been invaded by an awesome presence."

The memoir takes its rightful place alongside Proust (an influence) and the best works of speculative fiction.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Haunting Memoir, January 17, 2008

By 

M A Hatfield (El Paso, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir (Hardcover)

[[ASIN:0802118615 About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir
This book chronicles in unflinching detail the story of the extraordinary life of this groundbreaking author. Humor and sadness are inextricably linked in this compelling narrative. This is no trite coming of age story; it is a definitive and powerful tale of self discovery and identity. Love of family and home are powerful themes. This book is a treasure.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rechy remembers, March 30, 2008

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir (Hardcover)

As a preface to his compelling new memoir, El Paso native John Rechy offers a two-line caveat:

"This is not what happened; it is what is remembered. Its sequence is the sequence of recollection."

In this day of scandalously false memoirs, it is certainly refreshing to read such words. But Rechy's story is, by now, well known to those who have read his critically acclaimed 1963 autobiographical novel, "City of Night," which caused a literary sensation in part because of its subject matter: male prostitution, or hustling, as Rechy calls it.

In the new book, "About My Life and the Kept Woman" (Grove Press, $24 hardcover), Rechy revisits many of the events that wound up in that first novel and in subsequent novels -- but with an overarching theme to assist him in explaining decisions that led to a seemingly contradictory life of literature and sex-for-hire.

That theme is the "kept woman" of the title, the glamorous Marisa Guzman, mistress of the rich and powerful Mexican politician Augusto de Leon. It seems that Guzman's younger brother was engaged to Rechy's sister, Olga. Guzman had "conveyed her intention to travel from Mexico City and return to El Paso to attend her younger brother's wedding, thus challenging (her father), who had banished her years ago."

Intrigued by this alluring outsider, the young Rechy could barely contain himself when he caught a glimpse of the kept woman at the wedding reception. Throughout his memoir, Rechy repeatedly returns to this image of Guzman's defiant yet elegant appearance in the midst of those who were both fascinated and repulsed by her unashamed disregard for social norms.

Rechy struggled with his own outsider status, arising, in large part, from a mixed heritage as the son of a Mexican mother and a half-Scottish father.

Moreover, growing up in El Paso during the Depression and World War II, Rechy's budding sexuality and precocious literary tastes put him at odds with the socially conservative mainstream.

Rechy enlisted during the Korean conflict, which allowed him to travel in Europe while avoiding actual combat. After a two-year stint, he began his wanderings (and hustling) in New York, New Orleans and Los Angeles. But he kept alive the desire to express himself through the written word, a desire he possessed from a young age. He eventually wrote fictionalized accounts of his life as a hustler that appeared in a small but prestigious literary journal. These shockingly honest stories resulted in his first book deal.

In the memoir, Rechy tries to explain why he became a hustler. At one point, he turns to a vague and uncertain memory of sexual abuse at the hands of his father and father's male friends. But he pulls back and is unwilling (or more likely, unable) to give a definite justification.

As Rechy became more famous, he encountered other luminaries including, in one hilarious passage, the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who told Rechy to "relax, take your clothes off." "Why?" asked Rechy. Ginsberg answered: "Because you said you'd never grow undesirable. I hope that is true, really. For now, I want to see your body when I know it's beautiful -- and then it will be so forever in my memory." Rechy declined to disrobe.

As one reads this book, Rechy's warning that his memoir "is not what happened; it is what is remembered" often comes to mind. Whether each word is the unvarnished truth is of no matter: Rechy's life has been remarkable by any standard.

With 45 years of publishing both fiction and nonfiction under his belt, Rechy continues to create memorable and vital works of literature that honestly explore the importance of creating one's own destiny.

Marisa Guzman would be proud.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]