Synopsis
Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of four children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a blue-collar suburb of Toronto. Despite their working-class milieu, the Vellekoops are devoted to art, music, and film, and they instill a deep reverence for the arts in young Maurice—except for literature. He’d much rather watch Cher and Carol Burnett on TV than read a book. He also loves playing with his girlfriends’ Barbie dolls and helping his Mum in her hair salon, which she runs out of the basement of their house. In short, he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because the family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. They go to church twice on Sunday, and they send their kids to a private Christian school, catechism classes, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Needless to say, the church is intolerant of homosexuality. Though she loves her son deeply, Maurice’s mother, Ann, cannot accept him, setting the course for a long estrangement.
Vellekoop struggles through all of this until he graduates from high school and is accepted into the Ontario College of Art in the early 1980s. Here he finds a welcoming community of bohemians, including a brilliant, flamboyantly gay professor who encourages him to come out. But just as he’s dipping his toes into the waters of gay sex and love, a series of romantic disasters, followed by a violent attack, sets him back severely. And then the shadow of the AIDS era descends. Maurice reacts by retreating to the safety of childhood obsessions, and seeks to satisfy his emotional needs with film- and theatre-going, music, boozy self-medication, and prolific art-making. When these tactics inevitably fail, Vellekoop at last embarks on a journey towards his heart’s true desire. In psychotherapy, the spiderweb of family, faith, guilt, sexuality, mental health, the intergenerational fallout of World War II, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, French Formula Hairspray, and much more at last begins to untangle. But it’s going to be a long, messy, and occasionally hilarious process.
From: Penguin Random House
Notes on This Title
This is a memoir, exploring the author’s experience as a gay man who grew up in a Christian, immigrant family. It also depicts his experiences with depression and alcoholism.
Awards
None.
Reviews
Starred Review: “Vellekoop will enchant both his longtime queer comics followers and newcomers with his frank storytelling and tantalizing art.” (Source: Publishers Weekly)
“Vellekoop’s memoir covers a number of ideas: how one becomes an artist; his faith and community; the complicated relationship with his parents, especially his mother; his attempts to understand his sexuality, and then act on it.” (Source: The Comics Journal)
“A raw, revealing chronicle.” (Source: Kirkus Reviews)
“Vellekoop is invested in presenting the highs and lows of a life lived willfully resisting other people’s inconsistent, harmful attitudes.” (Source: NPR)
Interviews
Geeks OUT!: “Interview with Maurice Vellekoop“