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If You Knew Then What I Know Now (2011)

by Ryan Van Meter(Favorite Author)

4.36 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1932511946 (ISBN13: 9781932511949)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Sarabande Books

review 1: This was a great collection, and I was glad to be reading it when DOMA was struck down. Ryan Van Meter gives insight about what it's like to grow up with all kinds of subtle pressures are telling you not to be what you aren't even aware of yet. All the while, Van Meter shows a good amount of sympathy, too, for his parents and grandparents. The essays range in style from conventional first-person memoir to more experimental second person pieces. I liked the more straightforward sections the best and found myself wishing he'd publish a full length memoir. Each essay here was intended to stand alone, so sometimes Van Meter would repeat details from previous essays and that bothered me as I read this straight through. At any rate, a recurring theme in the work is how Van Meter... more had no models for what he was and had only pressures from others who told him he was different and bad and a "faggot"; this book about his journey to come to terms with his sexuality reveals his humanity and, in doing so, perhaps provides the kind of model for young people that he himself needed.
review 2: I read half of this book on the plane coming back from AWP, and then found myself slowing down as I was reaching the last several essays, not wanting it to end. Van Meter writes with a stunning language on the experience of growing up; how growing up and living in the closet impacts gay men at specific times, and echoes continuously, in their lives. There's a learned fragility and growing strength in Van Meter vs. the straight world (the path we all walk through), a reflective, inquisitive nature. Several essays shocked me at my specifically personal reaction to them, along with the universal. And there is a gripping acknowledgment on the aspects of fear we confront, in embracing a gay/queer identity, culiminating in an honest investigation on the word faggot; its history, its hatred, its power we try to tear down. I loved this book. less

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