My favorite things about this memoir are its humor and Franklyn’s literary voice, which is distinctive and authentic.
I was horrified and heartbroken reading about the abandonment and abuse he experienced as an effeminate gay boy, yet in the face of all that, he maintains a comic outlook. As a devoutly trained boy moving through a series of Catholic schools, he struggles inwardly with his sexual orientation and his faith.
I was shocked to learn about the lamentable US foster care system of the 1950s, but I had to keep reading to see how Franklyn would survive and where he would wind up. In the end, you will find him a compassionate and perceptive observer.
Evolution’s Rainbowmade me happy and excited because I write about sexuality and gender in my books. In a time when the LGBTQ+ community is being attacked, especially by criminalizing transgender people, this scientifically based book by a trans woman is a cause for celebration.
She presents numerous compelling examples from nature demonstrating that homosexuality and gender diversity/mutability are not uncommon. In later parts of the book, Roughgarden examines the various genetic and physiological origins of transgenderism in humans and the existence of homosexuality and gender variation across human cultures and eras.
I learned a great deal from this book. It’s a book that every politician and judicial officer should read.
In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science - and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary…
I took up Middlemarch after reading from various sources that it is many people's favorite book of all time—high praise, indeed! As a friend commented on social media: "I love Middlemarch. She gets inside people's heads so well it's embarrassing sometimes!" That is one thing I love about it.
Eliot's characters are each so distinct; they even speak differently. They come from such different backgrounds and perspectives: aristocracy, upper middle class, working class, professional doctors and lawyers, clergy. Some are deeply religious and ethical, others superficial and vain.
One important character is a young doctor with new medical ideas who moves to this rural area and tries to introduce different medical practices, thus ruffling the feathers of older physicians in the community—a situation I wrote about in a very different fictional time setting. Read Middlemarch and let it become your favorite book.
Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Henry James described Middlemarch as a 'treasurehouse of detail' while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot's masterpiece as 'one…
In 1923 when homosexuals had to hide their identity, Dr. Carl Holman's status with the respected clinic where he works is imperiled by pressures from the Ku Klux Klan, societal expectations to marry, and other forces beyond his control. As compassion impels him to treat unorthodox cases involving addiction, birth control, and child abuse, he must make difficult decisions about his professional and domestic affairs. Can Carl and those he loves find a way to live authentic lives in this hostile world?
