num_pages: 224
description: Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable. Growing up among poor migrant Mexican farmworkers, Rigoberto González also faces the pressure of coming-of-age as a gay man in a culture that prizes machismo. Losing his mother when he is twelve, González must then confront his father’s abandonment and an abiding sense of cultural estrangement, both from his adopted home in the United States and from a Mexican birthright. His only sense of connection gets forged in a violent relationship with an older man. By finding his calling as a writer, and by revisiting the relationship with his father during a trip to Mexico, González finally claims his identity at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality. The result is a leap of faith that every reader who ever felt like an outsider will immediately recognize. 2007 Finalist, Randy Shilts Awards for Gay Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle Winner, American Book Awards, Before Columbus Foundation
language: English
title: Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
titlecomplete: Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (Writing in Latinidad: Autobiographical Voices of U.S. Latinos/as)
genres: Queer Lit, Biography, Gay, Research, Mental Health, Queer, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Memoir, LGBT
ratings_count: 523
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: American Book Award, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Randy Shilts Award
category: Gay Nonfiction
publisher: University of Wisconsin Press