In the tradition of such quirky and smart coming-of-age memoirs as Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors and Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy, America’s Boy is an arresting and funny tale of growing up different in America’s heartland.
Wade didn’t quite fit in. While schoolmates had crewcuts and wore Wrangler jeans, Wade styled his hair in imitation of Robbie Benson circa Ice Castles and shopped in the Sears husky section. Wade’s father insisted on calling everyone “honey”—even male gas station attendants. His mother punctuated her conversations with “WHAT?!” and constantly answered herself as though she was being cross-examined. He goes to school with a pack of kids called goat ropers who make the boys from Deliverance look like honor students. And he both loved and hated his perfect older brother.
While other families traveled to Florida and Hawaii for vacation, Wade’s family packed their clothes in garbage bags and drove to their log cabin on Sugar Creek in the Missouri Ozarks. And it is here that Wade found refuge from his everyday struggle to fit in—until a sudden, terrible accident on the Fourth of July took his brother’s life and changed everything.
Equally nostalgic, poignant, funny, and compelling, this is a story of what it is to be normal, what it means to fit in, and what it means to be yourself.
Wade Rouse is the "laugh-out-loud-funny" (NBC's Today Show), "wise, witty, wicked" (USA Today), "engagingly funny memoirist" (Chicago Tribune) who is a "hybrid of "David Sedaris and Dave Barry" (Library Journal) and "Erma Bombeck's lovechild" (Advocate). Rouse "beautifully combines humor and pathos" (Out Magazine), and has quickly established himself as "an original writer and impressive new voice" (The Washington Post) whose "combination of honest emotion and evocative prose is destined to be a hit!" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). In short, Wade Rouse is "hilarious, riotously funny, catty, and an absolute delight!" (Christian Science Monitor)
Wade Rouse is the author of four, critically-acclaimed memoirs, including America's Boy (Dutton/2006), Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler (Harmony/2007), and the bestsellers, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life (Harmony/2009), and It's All Relative: A Memoir of Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine (Crown/2011). He is also the creator and editor of the upcoming, humorous dog anthology, I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales about Man's Best Friends by America's Favorite Humorists (NAL/2011), which features a foreword by Chelsea Handler and her dog, Chunk.
The IndieBound bestselling It's All Relative: A Memoir of Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine asks and attempts to answer the question, "How come the only thing my family tree grows is nuts?", in blisteringly funny detail. The book deals with America's obsession with picture-perfect holidays and celebrates Rouse's imperfect family--a chatty yet loving mother, an eccentric engineer of a father, a marvelously Martha Stewart-esque partner, a garage-sale obsessed set of in-laws, and an oddball collection of relatives--through the yearly celebrations that bring out the very best in our nearest and dearest. Rouse paints a funny, sad, poignant, and outlandish portrait of an all too typical family that will have you appreciating or bemoaning your own. "It's rare to find a book that is both funny and mean, family-intensive and gay-friendly, gossipy and sweet. It's All Relative is all of the above!" Minneapolis Star-Tribune
At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream chronicles the misadventures of two neurotic urbanites who quit their jobs, and leave the city, cable, couture and consumerism behind in order to move to the Michigan woods and recreate a modern-day Walden. At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream was a national bestseller, 2009 Best Book of the Year by B&N, and named a Must-Read by NBC's Today Show, Detroit Free-Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Petersburg Times, Out, MetroSource Magazine, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Public Radio, Michigan Public Radio, St. Louis Magazine, Frontiers Magazine, among others.
Rouse's first memoir, America's Boy, which chronicles his life growing up gay in the Ozarks thanks to the unconditional love from an unconventional family, was named by Border's as a Best Book (Literary Memoir) of 2006, "A Best Book of 2006" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. a 2006 BookSense selection by the nation's independent booksellers, an inaugural "Rainbow" pick for GLBT young readers by the American Library Association, and a PFLAG "Required Read". The American Library Association recently named it as one of the top 100 GLBT books.
His second memoir, Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler, about his tenure as PR director at an elite prep school where he quickly learns his "real job" is to cater to a Lilly Pulitzer-clad clique of "Mean Mommies," was selected by both Barnes & Noble and Target as a Breakout Bestseller, and hailed as "funny" by Entertainment Weekly. The memoir is about job discrimination and the incredible pressures facing faculty, students and parents today.
I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship features essays by some of America's favorite funny writers and comics, including Chelsea Handler, Jen Lancaster, Laurie Notaro, Bruce Cameron, Jane Green, Stephanie Klein, Beth Harbison, Alec Mapa, Jeff Marx (Tony winning creator of Avenue Q), Rita Mae Brown, Jill Conner Browne and many others. A portion of the book's proceeds will benefit The Humane Society of the United States.
Rouse was a contributor to the humorous anthology on working in retail, The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (Counterpoint-Soft Skull Press). Rouse's essay on working at Sears after years of wearing Husky's was selected to kick off the collection.
Rouse is a contributing humor columnist for Metrosource magazine, and TheBeachCoast.com, and a regular contributor to Michigan Public Radio. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous national magazines and online publications, including Forbes.com, which reaches nearly 10 million readers, as well as on CBC Radio One's popular "Definitely Not the Opera" in Canada and Chicago Public Radio. He has lectured and taught writing seminars around the country, from The Chicago Public Library to the Erma Bombeck Humor Writers Workshop. Rouse is represented by the Random House Speakers Bureau - alongside such luminaries as Ken Burns, Jay McInerney, Richard Russo, Jane Smiley, Gay Talese, Roy Blount Jr., and Lisa See - and is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please visit www.rhspeakers.com or call 212-572-2013.
Rouse's personalized, intense and transformational writing retreats - which center on overcoming fears in one's life and one's writing - and provide insider advice on securing a literary agent and finding success as a fulltime author, have been credited by numerous writers for helping their manuscripts be published by mainstream publishers. For more, please visit www.WadesWriters.com.
He earned his B.A. in communications (with honors) from Drury College (now University) and his master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Rouse lives on the coast of Michigan, where - in between beach weather and blizzards - he writes memoirs and battles for bed space with his partner, Gary, and their beloved mutt, Mabel. Wade is a volunteer and fundraiser for Wishbone-Paws For A Cause, an animal shelter in Michigan, a member of HRC, and supporter of Hospice. He is a marathon runner, avid reader and movie/theatre buff, and addicted to fashion, hair, lip shimmer, reality TV and non-fat, triple shot white chocolate lattes. Wade is represented by literary agent Wendy Sherman of Wendy Sherman Associates in Manhattan, and the Random House Speakers' Bureau. For more, please visit www.WadeRouse.com www.WadesWriters.com (writing retreats & classes) www.rhspeakers.com
This review is from: America's Boy: A Memoir (Hardcover)
America's Boy is a brutally funny, heartbreakingly honest account of a boy struggling to grow up in the Missouri Ozarks (Wade would prefer being a Winnie the Pooh children's clothing model to gigging frogs and catching catfish barehanded!). Reading the memoir is like sitting with a good friend in front of a camp fire and trading those difficult stories of growing up and family that we all share. What sets this book apart from an inundated field, however, is the honesty and joy that the author brings to his story -- in spite of his struggles, there is a fondness and welcome brightness to his writing. He honors his past, his family and where he came from, in spite of how difficult his path was. This is a special book that will resonate with nearly everyone: Those who feel different, those who have ever felt that they had failed to meet parental expectations, those who have ever lost a loved one, those who have ever struggled to just be accepted as they are. I breezed through this book in just a couple of nights, and laughed, cried, and cheered the whole way. I can't wait to read Wade's coming books.
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This review is from: America's Boy: A Memoir (Hardcover)
What a sweet, well-written book. And I don't think I say this because I grew up in a small town in Iowa around the same time period and so many cultural and corner-of-the-country references resonate with me. The story was poignant without being sappy; just a sweet memory of childhood, really, despite the nonheavy handedness (as dealt with here) coming out questions and the sadness and death surrounding the middle part of the story. I'll admit I found the transformation into a partying, kinda shallow-seeming gay man in the big city a little abrupt. Couldn't see much of the child in the man. And the author loses my sympathy over his admitted shoddy treatment of women. Kudos for honesty. Writing style kind of ran out of steam at the end, and the short "chapters" started to bug, especially once we were out of the Ozarks. But really well worth the read.
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This review is from: America's Boy: A Memoir (Hardcover)
A good memoir brings the reader into another's world, having them walk in someone else's shoes for awhile, and does so in an entertaining fashion. A great memoir does the same but goes beyond, bringing the reader to examine his/her own life in the process. "America's Boy" is a great memoir. Although Rouse and I were raised in vastly different manners, I came away with a better understanding of my own life's journey by reading his. Like many popular recent memoirs, Rouse's book is an easy read, full of witty pop culture references and funny tales of quirky family members and an unconventional childhood. What sets it apart is its sweetness and poignancy. The book caused me to reflect on my own losses in life and examine how they've shaped me. I came away with a greater appreciation of my own parents who - though very different from Rouse's - also did the best they knew how with the cards life dealt them. The, at times, shockingly honest Rouse reflects on the mistakes he has made and the people he's hurt, and I become inspired to examine my own weaknesses. Rouse's aunt tells young Wade how she hopes his life will be filled with many chapters. I know that I look forward to reading his next memoir and discovering more about myself in the process.
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First Sentence:
I AM five years old and standing as dramatically as a five-year-old knows how in the middle of the Rouse Family log cabin in the Missouri Ozarks. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Grandma Rouse, Sugar Creek, Grandma Shipman, Grampa Shipman, East Newton, Grampa Rouse, Straight-Up Rock, Missouri Ozarks, Robby Benson, John Deere, Nordic Track, New York, Jim Beam, Main Street, Kansas City, Reggie Smith, Count Chocula, Fourth of July, Miss America, Great-Aunt Blanche, Louis Cardinals, Old Betsy, Church of Christ, Future Homemakers of America
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