Customer Reviews

Lavender Road To Success: The Career Guide for the Gay Community

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This book greatly exceeded my expectations. I expected to get a career book with the usual (albeit) useful information, and instead found myself unable to put it down. Kirk Snyder gets his message across by introducing the reader to amazing gays and lesbians who have experienced all kinds of good and bad things in their careers and then translates it into great career advice. Reading this book is like meeting new friends who teach you all kinds of powerful lessons--and not just about how to do well in your career but in life. Gays and straights alike should read this book. If more straight people read books like this there would be less homophobia in the world.

Amazingly fascinating and helpful book! As a career professional, I would recommend this book for all college and university libraries and career centers across the country! Kirk Snyder's book is also very beneficial for those in the work force who need insight and encouragement to select a work environment that is supportive, and that fits with your interests and values. Mr. Snyder's research results, personal stories, and career exercises are motivating, helpful, and heartening. This is a landmark career book that everyone should read!

While gay men and lesbians have been "out" for awhile, some of us find that our careers are stalled and that in point of fact there may be a "pink ceiling" through which few of us are allowed to pass, like the rich men through the camel's eye in the Bible. Even graduation from a good school like USC might not be enough in and of itself to help you, particularly with a newly resurgent homophobia rampant throughout America. The Lavender Road to Success may have an embarrassing title, but the money you pay for this may be the best 15 dollars you'll ever spend. And of course with Amazon it's only $12.17 or whatever.

Kirk Snyder's done a lot of research. Is there anyone he hasn't talked to? The anecdotes and life experiences of others are sometimes tedious, like being forced to watch hours of other people's home movies of their vacations, but Snyder brings these stories to life, and we feel that we are not alone in our struggles for validation and also, of course, for more money and success in the marketplace. Do you remember the old movie "Gypsy," with Rosalind Russell playing Mama Rose, and how she kept herself and her girls going by moving from town to town always seeking our former lodge brothers of her late husband? She'd give the "secret handshake" and she'd be in like Flynn. Snyder's program involves this kind of "secret brotherhood" but in addition he presages a sort of gay meritocracy where each rises on his (or her) own merits and on what we have that's unique to us which we can bring to the table. Even if you have your own successful career you might still be interested in this book (you could always develop noblesse oblige and give it as a Christmas gift to your less-succesful exes over whom you're triumphing at the moment). As Snyder reminds us, we meet the same people going up as we did going down.

Kirk Snyder's "Lavender Road to Success" is not just about success and money. Its about really getting honest with who you are as a gay person and believing that you are worth going after your dreams. Snyders 7 Points of Success is worth the price of the book alone. Finally, somebody "gets it" when it comes to being gay and creating your own career success.

A lot of career books just talk around issues, but this one cuts to the chase, in part due to the stories Snyder tells about other gay people all over the country. I didn't go to USC, but I felt like I knew all of these people so well and learned so much from them. I have never seen a compilation this complete and so well told. It's actually a page-turner which surprised me.

The exercises in the book seemed like they were written just for me, which after reading this book, I know that others have experienced so much of what I have went through in my own life. Reading the book gave me a plan of my own to move ahead and I also feel like I'm part of a greater whole.

Kirk is a great colleague I'm fortunate to know. Lavender Road is a wonderful book. He dared to do this original study when very few had the courage to do so. The material is extremely helpful, no matter where you are in your career journey. You'll see yourself in these pages. His suggestions are sound and research-based, and, if followed, will help many increase their career satisfaction (and possibly their income too!).

Gay or straight with gay loved ones, you will gain much from reading this book! I would also encourage college career counselors and company leaders and managers to read this book to better understand what it's like for their GLBT colleagues, employees, managers, etc.