America's Boy: A Memoir

by Wade Rouse

Book Overview

In the tradition of such quirky and smart coming-of-age memoirs as Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissorsand Haven Kimmel?s A Girl Named Zippy, America?s Boyis 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 Castlesand shopped in the Sears husky section. Wade?s father insisted...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525949348
• ISBN13: 9780525949343
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Loved this book

This is a wonderful book. I laughed and cried at the same time. It is the best book I have read in a long time.

A smart and relatable memoir

Perhaps a small town in the Ozark Mountains is not an ideal place for a young man who feels very different from everyone around him. Small American towns can be claustrophobic and, in the extreme, bigoted and intolerant. But if that young man is born into a flamboyant and loving family, acceptance and comfort may come in the end. This is Wade Rouse's story, now published in his memoir AMERICA'S BOY. Rouse was born in 1965 in Granby, Missouri, a town in which everything, he writes, is bland, "white or off-white --- the people, the cars, the clothes, the houses." As a child growing up there, Rouse himself was anything but bland. The opening pages find him, at five years old, dressed in red high heels, a striped bikini and a tin foil crown with a sash proclaiming him "Miss Sugar Creek." Rouse's family, we sense, knows all along he is gay. And while they don't explicitly talk about it or even perhaps fundamentally accept it, they are loving and protective of him and accept that he is "different." Just when, as a young adolescent, Rouse realizes he is really attracted to boys and not girls, his older brother Todd dies in a motorcycle accident. Afraid of hurting his family any further by coming out, Rouse pretends to be someone he is not for almost the next 20 years. In order to help mask the hurt, Rouse eats. He finds comfort in food (and his family finds comfort in feeding him), and he thinks it will put up a barrier to intimacy. However, through high school and college he is popular with women, which adds another layer of stress to his life as he tries to thwart their advances without arousing suspicion. Finally, in his 30s, Rouse comes to terms with his brother's death, his eating and his sexuality. He loses weight, explores his feelings about his brother, and tells his family and friends he is gay. Of course, all of this was difficult and strained many of his relationships, but in the end it was undoubtedly the right thing to do. AMERICA'S BOY is a quintessential American story: the tug of conformity versus the pull of individualism. Happily, individualism wins in the end but not without struggle and pain. Rouse's memoir, while chronologically ordered, often reads like a series of vignettes --- the chapters are quick, easily read and the humor often belies the seriousness of the topic. Rouse's prose is light, witty and brisk. AMERICA'S BOY really shines when Rouse describes his family, especially his wonderful and vivid grandmothers. These two women, very different from each other, encouraged him and loved him so strongly that the reader can feel it in the text. His entire family is interesting and make for a compelling cast of characters, with the likeable Wade in the center. Rouse's brother Todd haunts the story and powerfully moves Rouse in both positive and negative directions in his young life. Wade Rouse's tale is about identity and family (and identity despite family). It is smart and bittersweet and, as a good memoir should be, dee

I, too, am America's Boy

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.

You can judge this book by the cover.....

I'll admit that it was the cover that first drew my attention to this book, but what's inside was even better. A frank, touching memoir about what staying in the closet does to the soul. Probably easier for the gay reader to identify with the subject mattter, but nonetheless a great story regardless of your gender/sexual orientaion. Props to Wade Rouse for telling his (important) story.

Hilarious, Heartbreaking and Uplifting

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.