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    If You Knew Then What I Know Now
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    If You Knew Then What I Know Now
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    If You Knew Then What I Know Now
    Ebook189 pages3 hours

    If You Knew Then What I Know Now

    By Ryan Van Meter

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The acclaimed author explores his path from closeted child to out-and-proud adult in this deeply personal collection of fourteen linked essays.
     
    “[A] moving debut. . . . Thanks to Van Meter’s honesty, essays on his own childhood, identity, and love have a profoundly universal appeal.” —Publishers Weekly
     
    The middle American coming-of-age has found new life in Ryan Van Meter’s coming-out, made as strange as it is familiar by acknowledging the role played by gender and sexuality. In fourteen linked essays, If You Knew Then What I Know Now reinvents the memoir with all-encompassing empathy—for bully and bullied alike.
     
    This deft collection maps the unremarkable yet savage landscapes of childhood with compassion and precision, allowing awkwardness its own beauty. This is essay as an argument for the intimate—not the sensational—and an embrace of all the skinned knees in our stumble toward adulthood.
     
    “As Van Meter drifts elliptically between his childhood as a closeted young boy and his life now as an openly gay man, he draws the reader inexorably to this book, and its compelling weight.” —The Plain Dealer
     
    “To read a book this observant, this fiercely honest, and this effortlessly beautiful is to feel the very pulse of contemporary American essays.” —John D’Agata, author of The Lifespan of a Fact
     
    “These essays are insistently honest, darkened by melancholy and yearning, yet polished by prose so lithe, so elegant that Van Meter’s human presence brightens every line.” —Lia Purpura, author of It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9781936747405
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for If You Knew Then What I Know Now

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      An enjoyable collection of connected essays on the gay experience. The essay "To Bear, To Carry: Notes on Faggot," was particularly thought provoking. Van Meter is an excellent writer and I look forward to reading his future work.